Friday, August 7, 2009

Green Island

Last weekend I went down to Green Island off the south east coast of Taiwan. I flew down from Songshan Domestic Airport to Taitung and then took the choppy 50 minute catamaran journey across to the island. The last time Joanne and I were there it was in the winter (February), at that time of year there were hardly any tourists on the island. In August the place was crowded.
In February we had seen thousands of scooters parked up by the port, last weekend they were all rented out and were being driving on the 19 km road around the island.
I had an introduction to scuba diving in the beautiful crystal clear waters by www.greenislandadventures.com.
Although enjoyable, I opted to stick to snorkelling, the view of the reef and tropical fish is almost as good and the risks, should anything go wrong, are a lot less.
The weather was incredibly hot, the sun beat down mercilessly all day. On Saturday I neglected to put any sunblock on my shoulders and got a very bad sunburn, you just don't feel the sun when you're on the water surface. There have been a number of painful nights since then but thankfully the skin is slowly recovering.