Sunday morning I awoke with a fever. Apparently, the shots and the 48 hours of being awake and hungry because of the plane delay caught up with me. After some mercy administering, I began to feel better. (The headache passed, at least.) Three of Chu-wan’s college classmates showed up: Nora, Judy and Min-Min. Nora had a car so we drove to Yangmingshan National Park, which is north of Taipei.
Yangmingshan is the nearest National Park to Taipei and is a popular (and crowded) getaway place for the city residents. Formerly an area of active volcanoes, the park still spouts fumeroles and hot springs.
This was my first excursion into the countryside of Taiwan and I began to see some of the beauty of Taiwan, which had so far, frankly, been lost on me.
For a long time, Taiwan was known in the US as Formosa, which is Portuguese for “Beautiful”. Its full name was Isla Formosa or “Beautiful Island”, and it truly is a lovely, natural setting. “Steep and mountainous” doesn’t do justice to the description of the hills and countryside. Constantly wet with tropical, semi-tropical and temperate zones, the island is lush and green everywhere.
As we traveled around Yangmingshan my fever returned, as did my headache – with a vengeance.
Chu-wan and her friends were catching up on each other’s lives… in Chinese, so I was able to sit back and soak up the scenery, even if I wasn’t feeling in the best of sorts. Near, or perhaps in, the park, are flower orchards. We parked and looked through the fields. One shop had small cacti for sale as some form of exotic plant – a small reminder of home in an alien landscape. Afterwards we walked to a small tin shack where the girls had bamboo shoot soup.
Since I was not feeling well, bamboo shoot soup sounded like another phrase for “boiled wood” to me, and so I abstained. A storm came blowing through with incredible speed, and we headed back to the car and down the mountain. When we returned, I passed out from the fever and ended my day with a whimper.