04.11.15 Songluo Lake Trail journal- part 1

It had been raining for a few days, but we had planned this trip for a month and didn't intend to cancel it. So we got on the road anyway. We arrived in YiLan on Saturday afternoon, and first stopped at a few food stands to buy YiLan’s popular specialties: Fried scallion pancake and ice cream burritos! They were so good; I could literally eat them all day. Haha.
Then we went to do a hot spring fish pedicure, another specialty here. This is one thing I like to do in YiLan because I like fish a lot and it is fun to watch fishes and get an itchy (ticklish) feeling at the same time. After everyone had their feet nicely done, the food seeking game just continued…. I had no idea that my fellows (friends) could all eat like horses. They must all have a wormhole-like stomachs!

Finally, I lived though the eating contest and we were at the B&B (with my about-to-explode stomach). This B&B, run by local aborigines, had a pool, karaoke stage and a BBQ area. When we arrived, there were already a bunch of aborigines celebrating for a marriage proposal; and they were so nice and hospitality to ask hospitably asked us to join. We drank, ate (yeah, my fellows kept eating) and played (hung out) until midnight, I was happy about this, not only because the celebration was fun, but also the feeling about I also thought the hiking would certainly be canceled due to bad weather and our lack of sleep. But it was not. Everyone woke up at 5 in the morning, so I had to, too (as well). We had a quick breakfast before taking off, and then drove to the starting point of the hiking trail.

Songluo Lake is also known as a 17-year-old girl, because it is often surrounded by fog, just like a bashful teenage girl hides herself behind the curtain (I don’t think it suits today’s teenage girls anymore, lol). The trail is about 6 km one way; it takes 4 hrs to get to the lake and 3.5 hrs to come back. The weather was ok on Sunday, the sun showed up a little bit and no rain at all, but the trail was still very muddy and slippery. There was a faucet rest stop at 2.6k, hikers can take a break and clean up a little bit there. When I was just Just when I was ready to hit the trail again and put on my backpack, I found the bottom of my backpack was slimy. “shoot!” Just what I thought, the eggs I carried in a cup were broken.<to be continued>