Two Days Trip to The Golden Waterfall

I just came back from a river crossing holiday with my two sisters; Lanchun, Chier, and Chier's boyfriend, Mark. It was beautiful two day trip; green mountain, turquoise river, and beautiful mountain lakes hidden inside cliffs. We trekked up a mountain in Hualien for three hours passing an aboriginie's village and small huts built on the side of the mountain. It was a trip organised by Lanchun's climbing instructor and there were 27 people in total. When we reached our base camp it was only 10am and there was a rock in the middle of the river where we dived or jumped from, it was pretty scary at first cos the rock was huge and tall. My first jump from the rock felt like a 10 minute pause in mid-air before I touched the water, and another 10 minutes fall into the river. The river was clean and soothing. There were couples, singles, and family on the trip.

One particular couple touched my heart. The husband is afraid of heights and water but, he came on the trip to understand his wife's interest. He said he does this once a year so that he will learn to appreciate the things his wife enjoys. I was very touched to see them together, a young couple learning to understand each other. The wife was very talkative and gave him encouragements when he was scared of jumping off the rock, and when he didn't jump off the rock she still swam over and kissed him for trying. It was beautiful.

This morning we trekked further into the mountain and climbed up three water falls to our destination, "The Golden Waterfall." It's deep inside the mountain and off on the side of the mountain, you climb up a road, which doesn't seem to be there because there were so many rocks blocking it. But once you duck under the rocks and walked further in you will see the first lake. It's just like in the movies where you have the water fall in a really secret place; a place that you can be naked and swim and no one would know. The water was sparkling blue and when the sunshine hit the lake it became crystal clear, you could see the depth of the lake and the stones it was the most beautiful thing scene I have seen in Taiwan; a tropical heaven.

There were many waterfalls along the way and I stopped and gave myself a spa once in a while. It was really cold when we finally reached the destination but unfortunately we had missed the golden period for seeing the sun splash its rays on the waterfall...but nevertheless the three lakes prior to the final spot was well worth the trip.

We ate really well on the trip, noodles, pancake, chinese sausage, fruit, I was impressed that someone had carried all these stuff up just to make our trip more comfortable.

We slept by the lake at night in a tent made up of a plastic sheet and two wooden sticks. I could feel the gentle breeze flowing through. We had five tents and the whole scene looked like a village in Nepal.The valley was filled with stars at night, I even saw a shooting star whilst lying on the rocks. It was a narrow valley. We bathed in the river and drank from the river, primitive huh?