I survived the Green Island ferry!

This morning, my mom and I boarded the "barf barge." That's not its real name, of course--but it fits. After our night in Taitung last night, we were headed across the strait to Green Island (綠島), over a stretch of ocean which, as numerous people on numerous occasions warned us, has the nasty habit of making even those not prone to motion-sickness wish they hadn't eaten breakfast.


Unfortunately, it lived up to its reputation.


For me (and, based on their reactions, for a good-sized group of people on the ferry), the first 10 minutes or so were fun--as I kept telling myself, it's just like a bonus roller coaster ride thrown in with our journey! The swells were huge, but they were also pretty gentle, and their deep clear teal color was enough to keep me focused on their beauty, rather than their motion. After that, though, the water got choppier and my stomach decided it wasn't a fan of a roller coaster that goes on for an hour. From about the half hour mark onward, I spent my time fixated on a solitary dot on the front wall of the ferry (I named it Harvey, since I had to stare at it and I had no other way of entertaining myself without getting sick), telling myself that I could make it to the island without getting sick and trying to ignore the people around me taking regular advantage of the strings of clear plastic bags hanging from every other seat back.


This was not an easy task, given that my mom was one of them. Yep, though she's never been motion sick before in her life, and she (unlike me) did the responsible thing and took her Dramamine a half hour before we boarded, there was nothing for it: the ocean won.


Let's be clear here: these are not small waves we are talking about. Though we were pretty far offshore--it's an hour ferry ride from the mainland to the island--we never hit the theoretical calm I'd heard exists after you get past the breakers. No, what we got was closer to what you'd see on an old pirate film, or a rendition of Moby Dick or some such ocean adventure story: what almost made me sick several times was not so much the motion of the boat, but the fact that, if you glanced out the window on the other side of the boat, you could watch the sky disappear entirely behind a 40 foot wall of green water, only to reemerge in a few seconds as your side of the boat sunk down. And that's when you could see out the windows at all, when they weren't thoroughly covered in seething white foam.

Though I have full faith in modern ships (I'm here to write about it, after all), the experience certainly left me with new empathy for ancient travelers, and a certain awe for those who venture out on this particular stretch of sea in the many much smaller boats we saw docked on either end.


Having survived the tumultuous journey (and having sat for a moment to let our stomachs settle), my mom and I ventured out onto the island to discover that we were in the midst of a full-out wind-and-rain storm. After quickly procuring some ponchos from a nearby bakery (yes, odd to me too, but I wasn't asking questions!) and less quickly procuring a scooter, we took off around the island.


The next four hours (It's a short gap between ferries!) we spent circumnavigating the island on the crappy, rusty scooter the guys at the scooter shop rented us for a mere $200NT, stopping at several pull-outs to admire the view, missing several other attractions (we could not, for the life of us, find where to pull off for the lighthouse, for instance), discovering that most of the island was shut down for the off season, and getting pelted in the face by tiny ice-daggers of rain that made it almost impossible to see half the time.


The chief exception to this stinging, windy stress (on my part) was our stop at Zhaori Saltwater Hot Springs, one of only three natural salt water hot springs in the world. In better weather, you can go down on the beach and sit in pools at sea level; as it was, we watched from the safety of some more elevated springs as the pools below got slammed with wave after wave. The hot water felt so good after a day of getting whipped around by rain and wind.


And then it was time to cautiously eat a light meal (half a cup of hot milk tea and half a bagel for me), take our Dramamine (WELL in advance this time) and board the ferry again. Fortunately, either because the weather was better, the boat was lighter, or we picked better seats (back-middle, as opposed to front-side), this time we weren't puking or trying not to: I took a nap, and my mom was able to read. Much more pleasant when you're not counting down the minutes every minute for an hour.


Back in Taitung, we wandered around for a bit and eventually made our way to the train station, way too early, just because we had run out of things to do. It took a bit of creative work on my part (my final solution involved my known vocabulary, old notes from my Chinese class, a borrowed Chinese-English dictionary and a bit of sign language), but eventually I convinced the man at the information desk that I had already purchased my tickets online and needed only to pick them up, and he was able to retrieve them for me.


And now we're in Hualien, at a lovely little B & B called Roseland/Rose House, depending on what sign you look at, which is absolutely adorable and was a pretty good price, too. Tomorrow, we head out for Taroko gorge, via bus and taxi, based on what the man who picked us up at the train station was able to tell us.


Today has been an adventure, to be sure, but we're surviving! Can't wait to see what tomorrow holds--on dry land.