day 2 (continued part 1) - taipei to hualien

we proceeded to the yehliu scenic area to see, i quote the itinerary, "unique geological features". it was about noon then, and was blazing hot. we alighted at this smelly fishing port, with many stalls selling souvenirs and food. the air stank of fish. the heat and the stench put me in a foul mood immediately (pun unintended). we had to walk down this long path to where the rock formations were. i forgot to take my umbrella down with me and after 5 minutes in the sun, i felt my head start to bake. i spent the rest of the time running from tree to tree, trying to hide under their shades as much as i could.

still on the road, almost reaching yehliu.

at yehliu.

yehliu is basically a beach with weird looking rocks that were eroded by the sea to become various unusual shapes. for example there was a rock shaped like a gorilla, which i don't have a photo of.

i honestly don't see their charm. they all looked quite ugly to me, like deformed and mutated corals sprouting out randomly over the otherwise pretty beach. or maybe the heat was getting to me...the sun was so glaring, i could barely open my eyes. i kept looking down at the crater filled ground and grumbling about what a waste of time it was to go see ugly rocks.

see the cluster of rocks at the top right of the pic (click to enlarge)? they're supposed to be shaped like heads, with one of them being named "the queen victoria" or something, because it was shaped like a queen's head. i couldn't be bothered to squint long enough, but a quick, uninterested glance was enough to tell me that yes, the damn rock looked creepily like queen victoria/elizabeth/mary/who cares.

we had to be careful and stay on the path, otherwise we could fall into one of these potholes that were on either side of the path.

this rock was shaped like a slipper, and the taiwanese cleverly named it "the fairy's slipper", and even had a tale about how a fairy dropped one of her slippers at yehliu many moons ago. luck-e remarked that the taiwanese probably helped nature by shaping the rock to look more like a slipper when no one was looking. haha.

these ends of the beach were, in my opinion, the only nice parts of yehliu, unscarred by the rocks.