Scooting Around Green Island

Green Island is a tiny volcanic blip off the south eastern coast of Taiwan. It used to be the location of exile for political prisoners back in the 1940s-80s when the government was run under martial law. It is now a booming tourist area. I had the opportunity to explore the island in the low season, however, which had it's pros and cons, both being that there was hardly anyone there.

Getting to the island is fairly straightforward. I took a coastline train from Hualien south to Taitung, then a taxi ride to the pier and just made the last ferry of the day, leaving at 1:30pm.

While waiting for the ferry, I met Simone, a German student studying abroad who got sick of her classes and decided to play hooky for a few days. We did that thing that solo travelers get really good at where we see each other from a ways away, make eye contact, smile, do the 'hey, what's up?' head tilt, and suddenly become best friends for the remainder of the time together.

During the hour long ride over to Green Island, we chatted, learned a little about each other, and established that we were both totally winging it because neither of us had done much, if any, prior planning or research before getting on the boat. Same style.

When we got to the island, it was apparent that we needed to rent a scooter to be able to see and do anything. We wanted to look at the visitors center first, though, to get a map of the island and an idea of where we could stay for the next two nights. Unfortunately, the walk from the harbor to the visitors center was 2km, plenty of time for several old women to drive up to us convincing us that we needed to stay at their hotels for 2000NT per night (about $70 USD). We trudged on, sweating from lugging our packs. The only polite evasion technique I know of is saying "boo-yow, shay-shay" which means 'no, thank you,' but they are extremely persistent.

We finally arrived at the visitors center, got some more information, talked to someone who spoke a small amount of English, and, in the end, ended up renting our scooter from the lady who tried to sell us the hotel room, which seemed like a nice compromise, considering she followed us all the way to the visitors center jabbering at us in Mandarin.

Note to self: make more of an effort to learn the local language before arriving in any given place in the world...

The scooter cost $10 per day and fortunately, all I needed to give the woman was my Wisconsin driver's license. To save money, and because Simone didn't didn't know how to drive a scooter, we just got one to share. We ended up with a slight fiasco though, when I started it up and saw that the tank was completely empty. Through a bunch of hand motions, the woman communicated to us to follow her to the gas station, where thankfully we met a nice young guy who spoke some broken English and helped translate. When the tank was full, the woman pointed at me, then the pump and said "you pay." 'No way,' I thought, 'That's not how this works.' I looked at the guy translating and said that she should pay for the gas, then we will fill the tank again right before we return it in two days. The woman must have understood enough of what I said because she immediately got defensive, pointing at the pump angrily and saying "no, you pay, you pay" as the guy looked at me sheepishly and said "yeah, that's not how it works here." Great. Not wanting to argue or upset the woman and further, Simone and I paid for the gas so we could be on our way. After all, it was only about $3 and we really didn't want to end up on anyone's bad side. When the woman (translated through the young guy) told us to make sure we kept the tank full, we just nodded and smiled. "Okay, no problem." Thumbs up!

So off we went to find a place to stay. We did a full lap and a half around the island, stopping at various places, realizing we weren't going to find a bed for less than $20/night, and finally shacked up in a dorm above a dive shop that came with a decent breakfast. We made up for the room prices by eating cheap 7-11 meals and not paying any entrance fees while we were there. Luckily, since we already had the scooter, we were free to roam the island at our leisure.

There is one road that circles the island, following the shoreline, making it easy to choose a route and visit each point of interest. It's only about 20 km long, so after two days I think we ended up doing about 8 laps around the island total.

There is a special cemetery on the island known as the 13th Company where the political prisoners who died while in exile are buried. The prisoners were divided into 12 companies, so they called their dead the "13th Company" to memorialize their undying spirit.

Further down the road you can find ruins of an old village close to the shore, overtaken by foliage. Eerily beautiful, especially on a cloudy day.

There was plenty of time to explore the tide-pools.

What is this monstrous slug??

This woman was collecting seaweed to cook with typical island dishes of rice, fish, and seafood.

Near the cemetery, we found Swallow Cave.

The prisoners used the cave as a theater and put on plays.

Further along, there are other paths that lead to various viewpoints.

Some lead straight up the mountain, to the center of the island.

There were tons of butterflies and Simone and I both wanted to get a picture, but it was hard because they fluttered around so quickly. We spotted two that were mating and took advantage of the photo op. Butterfly porn.

Not long after I taught Simone how to drive (a task that lasted about 90 seconds and almost resulted in the scooter smashing a van, but she figured it out quickly) this dog ran up and hopped right on for a ride! We laughed and shooed her off, then started down the road, but she started following us, sprinting for a good half km before we decided to pull over and let her back on.

As soon as we reached our destination, the dog hopped off and, within five minutes, was copulating with some bro-dog from the park. The girl just needed a lift to her booty call! On we went...

There is a single road heading up the mountain from the visitors center (the only road other than the one circumnavigating the island) so we took it, thinking we'd get a nice view of the entire island, but we ended up at a fenced off military area.

Not far from the end of the road, we saw a trail head with a "viewpoint" sign, so we went for a little hike. Along the trail we took turns taking the lead, sweeping away numerous spider webs. Most of them ranged from the size of a quarter to the size of a Pringle, but about half way there, we came face to face with what I can only describe as the Goliath spider, mother of all arachnids on the island. This horrifying creature, larger than my face, stopped us both dead in our tracks and we immediately decided whatever lookout point lay ahead was not worth it and ran away, barely giving my camera time to focus.

Back down by the shore, stretches of walkway make it easy to get to the deeper water without killing a bunch of tide-pool life.

I managed to enjoy one chilly snorkel session which was wonderful despite the dull coral. It felt great to get the fins wet again, considering it had been a whole month since the last time I explored the deep blue. I am spoiled...

The entire island was lined with picturesque, moss-covered rocky shores.

Although we didn't get much sun, we didn't have rain either. Ideal moped weather, I'd say.

I, of course, wasn't satisfied until I found some geocaches right before boarding the ferry back to "mainland" Taiwan.

Simone and I truly had the entire island to ourselves. We rarely saw another tourist, let alone many locals. I can only imagine what the road is like in high season, because there were literally thousands of scooters lined up along the harbor, clean and shiny, waiting to be rented.

Green island was a fun little getaway from the busy civilization that is urban Taiwan. I'm happy I found someone as laid back, flexible, and adventurous as Simone to share the experience with.