Swimming, BBQ and Alishan

It is apparently my task to write about our time on Little Liocho island. 
As Nancy said, we had a rather hard time sleeping, but we weren't really there to sleep.  We were their to relax and swim, which we most certainly did.  The funny thing about Taiwan, despite being a semitropical island, is that very few peopl actually swim.  Or know how to.  This goes back to the Japanese occupation of Taiwan, so I'm told.  In order to fortify the island, the beaches had to be guarded, all of them.  Hence, no swimming.  You might say, "but the Japanese haven't had control of Taiwan for the past 65 years or so!"  And you would be right.  The fact that there are still very few swimmers seems to be testament to the powerful and respected position that the older folk of Taiwan seem to have on the youth here.  I'm not really sure about that last part, but the current generation is apparently the first generation that is actively taking swimming lessons.  Why do I mention this?  The beaches we went to on Little Liucho were practically deserted, despite it being a weekend and despite there being plenty of tourists on the island.  On one of the nicest (small) beaches I've seen in Taiwan we were the only ones there.  We paddled around in the waves looked at the tropical fish and over all had a grand time for about 2 hours.  Then we dried off and had a late lunch of dumplings.  Only when we were leaving did others show up, but even then, they only dipped there feet in the water (and were fully clothed in jeans and long sleeved shirts while doing so).

It was the same story on the other beach.  Except as we left this one a group of younger folks arrived and took some pictures in front of the water.  One of the more adventurous stepped into the water (for more pictures) and yelled defiantly at the waves.  And then they left.  Yes, we enjoyed the beaches of Little Liucho Island.

On our way back from this beach Nancy made friends with one of the vendors.  They are now facebook friends.  She added Nancy using her smart phone.  It might be a little hard to talk to her though, since the only English words she seems to know is "no English".  She repeated this constantly as she sold us ice cream and some of the best sausages we've had in Taiwan (not the healthiest lunch ever, I know).
Our campsite (which also had cabins and styled itself a resort) had a resturaunt on site and our nightly fee included a free breakfast from it, whenever the lady who ran it showed up.  They also did a BBQ.  A BBQ in this case essentially means that they give you a mini BBQ and a bunch of stuff to cook on it.  It was quite fun, though there were some odd things to BBQ, like bread.  We did not barbeque the squid.  The best thing to go with a Taiwan BBQ is a "distictive taste" Taiwan Beer.  We enjoyed our BBQ and Beer under a starry night sky, something we became very unused to living in Chidu, which seems to be under a constant cloud cover.  It was great to look up at the night sky and wonder about the stars.  I must say though, our star and constalation naming abilities need some work.
After arriving in Chiayi I immediately wanted to return to little Luicho.  But this internet cafe has grown on me.  We still have about 2 hours left to stay here if we choose to. We got 5 hours on the internet provided we spent 50 NT on coffee.  Comically enough, the coffee came in Tim Hortons mugs.  I have no idea how an internet cafe in a small industrial town in Taiwan has Tim Hortons mugs.
Tomorrow we will leave Chiayi and head into the mountains of the Alishan National park, which sounds more challenging than it probably is.  I am not looking forward to carrying that heavy backpack along the trail from the village our bus stops at to the next village (a 3-4 hour walk we are told).  But hey, we're backpacking, so I gotta be tough!