Plucking plums in Dahu and a wet ride to He Huan Shan

June 21, 2007

This is me at the top of He Huan Shan last Tuesday. I was wet and cold. The plan was to meet up with some Taipei friends and camp at one of the parking lots up at the top. I arrived much earlier than the others’ ETA and took a fraction of a second to decide I would NOT be camping on wet, cold tarmac. Since it had been raining hard most of my trip, even my rain gear was not enough to keep the seep from reaching every part of my miserable, shivering body. But the air was crisp and wonderful. I decided to stay at a “guesthouse”, a few kilometres down from the top, where the road forks into the “He huan shan tunnel”. For 300 NT, I got a 2.5m x 2.5m room with a mattress and 2 damp blankets. But I hardly noticed. I was too busy whining about the damp air and dealing with the horrid realization that my clothes would be just as wet the following morning. I wish I had more photos, but my phone got waterlogged. Here is the last one before it pooped out on me:

As it turns out, I was the one havin a good time. One of the lads from Taipei had a terrible accident near Dahu (the place I would go plum picking with my family the following day). He is still in bad shape at the hospital and we still can’t piece it all together. He’s got a cracked skull and will probably loose an eye. He just had a baby a few months ago. Fuck. Get well soon Thierry.

I’ll write about the plums in the next post.

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