Taiwan,Taipei,Trains and Taroko

After a suprisingly pleasant trans pacific flight (not too full, so room to spread out), we landed in Taipei at 6 a.m. local time.  The opulant Taipei Regent is our home for 2 nights.
Our scavenger here cover 2 separate days, so we all head off at 10 a.m. with a list for the day.  We opt to get out of the busy, noisy, smelly city and take a 2 hours express train ride south to Hsinchu City in search of an ancient gate and a site called the "City of God Temple".  A good view of the countryside, mostly rice paddies (even in the cities).  We find both scavengers fairly quickly and easily, both are pretty unremarkable, though the temple is full of torture instruments.  The City of God dispenses justice.  We return to Taipei by a slow local train via the town of Yingge, famous for its pottery making along "the old street".  Unfortunately a downpour more than dampens our appreciation of the area.  We find temporary refuge from the monsoon at Granma's - a tea house that takes "presentation is everything" to new heights.  Back in Taipei, we visit one of the many city night markets in search of "small bites" to eat, and a very special massage that involved precussion with meat cleavers (the sharp part)!
Day 2, different challengers and 10 hours to do them.  We decided, based on the high recommendation of a Kiwi team to go to Taroko gorge.  Another train ride, this time down the east coast.  A speedy taxi ride takes us up a staggeringly spectacular river gorge with 1200 foot high walls.  One could hike here for days, but not this trip.  Our cabbie, with as much English as we have Chinese dropped us off for a short walk to a view point, then is nowhere to be seen when we return.  After a half hour of rapidly increasing panic we discover her on the back of a moped, searching for us.  We hustle back to the train and our 3 hour trip back to Taipei.  We quicly check out different noodle types, have some Boba tea and turn in our score sheets.
After about 5 hours sleep we will be off to.....
Burma

The City on the Bay

Well, in a total break with tradition, after we met our fellow travellers last night (they seem  to be  a great bunch) we fully expected to be heading to the airport after dinner for 13 or 14 hours of hell on board a plane to somewhere in Asia. Instead we spent a wonderful sunny day running around San Francisco.  We  were handed our scavenge books at about 9 a.m. (a pleasantly civilized hour) and a half hour later we were on our way.  We started by plotting a route that began in Chinatown where we found our horoscope signs in Chinese.  We learned that "Du Pon Gai" means Grant Street and that St. Mary's Square has a statue of Sun Yat-Sen.  We found a "lonely meter" off the Filbert street steps.  It's a parking meter that does not have a parking space attached to it - there's a park bench instead. Not sure if you're supposed to feed the meter while resting after the steep climb up to the Coit Tower! We visited Washington Square (which is not a square at all but a trapezoid), checked out some haunts of the beat poets, and were back at our hotel by 5 p.m. to hand in our score sheets and to find out that we are flying to Taipei at about 1 a.m.Sunday morning.  We have 10 teams this year.  Besides Team MadDog, there is a team of sisters (Katrina and Fiona)  from Sidney, Australia, and a couple of  teams from New Zealand,  as well as a single traveller also from N.Z.  who has been paired up with a fellow from New Orleans.  There's a couple from Wyoming and a father and son team from California.  Then of course there is the Littlepage-Booth contingent:  Rainey and Zoe (the reigning champs) along with David and Natasha who are repeating and Rainey's daughter  Emily with her guy Angel.

Here it is, 2012. 2 years have passed since out last global adventure. That is not to say that we have stayed home the past 2 years, we have just had other adventures, like an amazing trip to South Africa, a month of roaming the beaches north of SanDiego, and couple of weeks in CostaRica. But, I'm getting off track, back to the scavenger hunt. The pain and frustration of 2 years ago has faded sufficiently that we are doing it once again. Yes, I do remember what I said after the 2008 and 2010 trips. The problem is, that, the mystery of not knowing where you're going and the joy if finding destinations that weren't on your radar screen gets in your blood. Yes, we're addicts, travel junkies and proud of it.
We leave on April 12 and meet with the rest of the hunters on the 13th, with bag packed and ready to roll. We start in SanFrancisco and this year we will finish in Washington D.C. on May 5.
Cheer us on.

from Vienna

We've been handed our challenges and it's quite a list.
We have to get ourselves to Paris by Friday 10:00 a.m. and our choices of stops
on the way can be Switzerland, Germany, Slovakia, Hungary, Czech Rep. or a quick
side trip to Leichtenstein. Carefull planning needed.
More later
k&j

January 9,2010

Hello everyone

The date is January 9, 2010, and yes, Joanne and I have done it again. We've signed up for another Global Scavenger Hunt. Yes, we did whine and complain, a lot, about the lack of sleep, the endless hours on airplanes and in security lineups, the very early wake up calls, the extreme heat and exhaution but we liken it a little to child birth (an area where we both have soooo much experience) where you forget about the painful bits and revel in the great bits. In any case,
we thought if we were to ever do it again, this is the time so we're off to parts unknown on
April 9 and back on May 1. This time we will try to do a better job of keeping our blog up to date.
Before then, we're spending a week in Baja and have a condo on the outskirts of Cabo.
I'm specifying "on the outskirts" cause we're both way too old to be in the centre of this party town that is totally geared to 18 - 30 year olds. However, we are close enough that we could have a week of partying to get us into shape for GSH. - nahh, not going to happen : )
We'll update as we get info.
K&J