now this was a first, camping at church yeah this was uh the only place we could
find yesterday after we spent about six hours at 7-Eleven we finished up around 10 whenever
they closed and we're like okay we gotta go find some place to camp and there's an
elementary school down the street with a big field that I thought was a park but no it's a
school it's closed up but this was right like the 7-Eleven is right behind its apartment building
and uh yeah it was quiet over here it was nice and dark and it's a church you know it's okay we
can camp at a church right let me show you our setup from last night over here in the corner
perfect actually this was all dark there were no lights over here camp here
a lot of cabbage farms in this parts of Taiwan this is all cabbage
7-Eleven is right there
and let me tell you it feels so good out here the air is so fresh it's so clean
it's chilly like it's so refreshing it feels so good uh unfortunately
we slept with this thing on just for privacy but if we were out in the middle of nowhere it would
be so nice to have that off and just let the air come into the tent but it feels good out here
today we got another challenge we got another 20 miles to go and I think we're climbing like 4000 feet today
up and down mostly up all right all packed up and ready to go
there's a lot of people up here cleaning the church now they already came over and said hello
like oh you stayed here last night that's cool where are you going really nice now I want to
see if we can get some water you know you can get water at the police stations like I've shown you
let's see can you get water at a church let's see
that smells so good out here in the countryside
this is like a restaurant wow hello good morning do you have water yes all right thank you
oh yeah I guess this is like a community center slash Church you got a gym over here
and so Vanessa was just able to find out that this building over here is used as like an elderly
Community Center so a lot of the elders I guess in the community they can come there and they can
you know do some activities and uh stay fit and stay healthy and one thing I want to show you too
is uh these names right here this language so it's all the Aboriginal language you know
there's still a lot of Aborigines that live in Taiwan some like two percent of the entire
population of Taiwan is the uh made up of the Aboriginal community and people which
I think when a lot of people when they think of Taiwan they immediately think of you know
Chinese ethnicity and so that wasn't always the case I was surprised to read when I was doing
my studying that when the Dutch were here in the early 1600s they recorded only about a thousand
Chinese that were living on the island at that time you know most of them obviously on the on
the the West Coast the the coast closest to China but at that time there were only one thousand uh
Chinese living on the island and now there's like 22 23 million and it's pretty cool they
see this in a lot of places though they'll put the uh the meaning of you know wash and
rinse and dry and whatnot and even the names for for girl I don't know how you pronounce that
but they're doing that because a lot of the language a lot of its
traditions are being lost here in in Taiwan I'm sure a lot of the Aboriginal community
speaks Chinese wouldn't you say that Vanessa like most of the Aborigines speak Chinese right
like just natural like they just like education in Taiwan is all taught in Chinese and so
that's kind of the problem like you know I think starting in 1895 and when the Japanese came here
and they were able to fully colonize the island and then later on when they were defeated and
surrendered and The Chiang Kai-shek era came and then they really clamped down and they banned
Japanese of course and then even banned probably the the local languages and so everything had to
be taught in Mandarin in Chinese and so you know during that white Terror period I think a lot
of the the Traditions a lot of the culture was lost and so there's a huge attempt I think here
in Taiwan to uh don't forget where you came from your heritage your culture your language and so
you see a lot of that especially for the younger Generations who were growing up only speaking
Mandarin but yeah let's take a look at some of these pictures so yeah I'm here
such a community center
so I guess this would be
wow and so yeah they have things like this this is all their local English ah excuse me oh I want
to hear how it sounds I want them to read this they want to give us these okay can we trade
okay okay perfect
about how many uh Taya are there
okay so like uh is Chinese
is the original name of the area
she's explaining how we got here and people are like oh my gosh that is crazy it is kind of crazy
so an old man just came in here who was the old man who was that I know um
The Village uncle
I think I showed you this how you eat it you have the garlic and the sausage and
you take off a little bit you bite off a little bit it's a good day
that's the way to do it
oh it's sweeter. we need to cut our nails today yeah this is nasty
those ladies were so nice thank you for giving us water and being kind of us talking to us and
uh giving us a sausage but yeah now we're gonna go to 7-Eleven real quick recharge the phone uh
I need to call my dad because it's Father's Day and we need to get a bite to eat uh we
need to get some fruits and vegetables because where we're going probably doesn't have much
and so we're here on the side of the road we have a little street vendor [Music] [Applause]
that was probably really loud selling what we got here I'm getting the east side we can share like
I know nice I already chopped that's your fruit yeah passion fruit how much is attached fruit
100 yeah 100 for you get one three dollars around three dollars for one two three
four five six seven eight nine ten in America I found that they were selling
one passion fruit for seven dollars at the convenience store at the supermarket Texas
you don't want fruit you can come get your bags your uh your Timberland boots
Florida
cat has a mustache come here [Music]
people are amazed by the bikes they want to know where we're
going what we're doing they're all very impressed
well we're on the road finally and it didn't take long before we had to start pushing we're going
up like 4400 feet today in elevation total up and down a little bit but mostly up obviously
so we're gonna be pushing a lot [Music]
truck driver just stopped and it was like you want some drink he gave us this big ole sports drink
which we're already loaded down yeah so we love that though it's pretty good it's really good
yeah we're gonna go as far as we can I mean we've been pushing 80 of the time so far
like nothing you can do about it it's just steep
this is uh the crazy part right here can you get my break for me
man look at this is what we're looking at we've got we're up 5200 feet right now
we're going up to 6 500 before we get to go down awesome but then in the top
we get to enjoy our lunch chill out and hopefully have a spectacular View
this is interesting bunch of black Mercedes vans numbered uh one through six seven maybe
that has been one of the most uh fun things to see on this little journey is like all the people
who pass us you know and maybe they honk at us or they give us a fist bump they give us a thumbs up
you know they yell or something like don't give up or good luck and so
that's always fun to see and encouraging I guess but just to give you an idea
where we are we started the video in Nanshan we started this journey I
don't know when this video is going to start but we started 12 kilometers away
it's been uphill the entire time but we are way up here
we've already climbed like 2 000 feet we're at like 5500 feet elevation uh and so yeah we
found a good spot on the side of the road we're gonna eat our lunch that we picked up in Nanshan
and get some more energy and uh finish this uphill climb let me show you what we're eating
that's what I love to see all the people honking and giving us thumbs up
hopefully my buns not too uh soggy and crushed so we picked up three of these eggs from a local
supermarket and a steam bun and then the lovely lady at the church that gave us some
uh seaweed crackers very nice of them and then we picked up these from the supermarket
as well some mixed fruit chips from Vietnam you say you like these oh they're delicious
so nice still on the side of bro eat lunch got a nice breeze
very disappointing
so this is the viewpoint on the map kind of disappointing we've uh We've climbed from
3775 to about 64 000 feet in elevation and on the map it's like oh there's a Viewpoint
so you're thinking oh yes we're going to be rewarded with the beautiful view and this is it
and yeah that's that's it let's see if I can get you in there it's kind of hard to tell but
okay there's some cutouts over here where people
have uh had the same idea I wanted to get a better look
but we came from all the way down in that Valley today and down there you can kind of see the road
so many times people just stop and look at us like we're like
from another planet they look like whoa whoa
I mean if they uh see two bikers out here
and we're out in the middle nowhere they they know we've come a long way
all righty and just a little bit down the road we found the entrance to a Trailhead
uh Taroko National Park someone just parked and uh at the same time we didn't was telling
us that we have to stay here this is one of the most beautiful mountains in Taiwan so
we just got the okay from Vanessa we got a good spot up here is
okay so we didn't go very far but apparently this is one of the top mountains in Taiwan
and yeah I think this is going to be home for tonight hell yeah
oh my goodness we have wildlife
is it a friendly guy, babe, come here
I scared him away [ __ ] I should not have yelled [Music]