For no reason whatsoever, I decided to close out my trip to Taiwan with a long hike in the Tawianese forest.  I guess I can’t say "no reason."  Vittorio and I had taken a gondola up to the hills to see some pretty big temples, but he had to leave to catch his flight back to Europe.  I still had another 5 hours to kill, so I thought 3 of them could be effectively used wandering around the woods.

Plus, my Lonely Planet guidebook, which hadn’t really been right or useful all week, said there was this crazy temple buried in a wall behind the waterfall.  I had to see it. So off I went, up the rock stairs into the unknown forest.

I’m not sure why I expected it to be less humid in the middle of the forest.  But it wasn’t.  And I guess I forgot about the fact that there would be bugs, because there were.  Otherwise, the hike started stupendously.

It didn’t take too long for me to start talking to myself, mainly cursing how this idea had enetered my head.  Why couldn’t I have stumbled on the page in the guidebook that mentioned an air conditioned museum, or better, maybe a  martini bar. 

But I would carry on.  After all, when is the next time I would be able to see a temple in a waterfall?

After a few km, I reached a key fork in the road.  Unfortunately for me, the brilliantly marked signage did not mention which diretion my destination was.  I would be forced to use the guidebook, which to this point had gotten me lost on well marked city streets in two different countries.  Now I would use it for an unmarked forest trail.  Yippee.

I slogged through the trail when a frightening thought hit me.   Vittorio had left me in a totally different place than I was now.  Literally no one in the world knew where I was.  If I fell, I’d be one of those guys that just vanished off the planet.   Hmmm….

The hike was beautiful, except for the fact that I had no confidence in where I was going, and not very much hope that I was headed toward my mysterious temple.  The path kind of disappeared, but I finally found a creek, which seemed like a pretty good thing to follow if I was looking for a waterfall.  The bridge I came across did not instill confidence, but luckily the water was shallow enough to cross.

Anyway, after a few hours, I actually found this temple, and it was pretty cool – especially for something built into the side of a waterfall.  I walked through to take some pics from the other side, and there were actually some people inside there, which kind of freaked me out.  And they offered me tea.  Now, I thought it was a funny thing for people who don’t speak English to offer to sit down and pantomime with me.  But I appreciated the gesture, despite the fact that drinking unfiltered Taiwanese forest water before getting on an 11 hour flight seemed like a poor idea.  I passed on the tea, and headed back to the gondola, content with the way the trip was coming to an end.