Gold Diggin

Last weekend Esther had suggested that we take a drive up the coast and try to find a museum and a little cafe that serves waffles. I thought that sounded like a fabulous idea. The coast is a gorgeous drive and I like driving so rock on. I invited Tony and Wes and we were all psyched up to go (well I was anyway).
Later that week she sends me a text telling me that the kindy she works for is screwing her over and she will send more details. The next day I get this letter from her detailing all the crap they were trying to force on her and consequently she told them to give her the money they owe her and fuck off. They did and she quit. To celebrate she and Angelo (her boyfriend) decided to take a celebratory vacation and took off, thus leaving us to find said waffle place on our own even though none of us had any real idea of where it is.
That's okay though. Part of the fun of driving aimlessly is seeing what you're going to discover.
So on Sunday the three of us (Wes, Tony and I) gathered. Our initial plan was to try and find a haunted futuristic pod city that had been abandoned by the Taiwanese, because you know, haunted. Tony found something that said they had finally been torn down in January though. That made us all a little sad. They are spectacular in their hideousness. Look here.

So with that plan abandoned we just set out driving at random. I headed in a direction that I roughly knew, becuase it is really easy to get lost here. Something about the way Taiwan was settled and then expanded over the years resulted in lots of twisty roads and random directions that make no sense whatsoever to anyone. Seriously I've been in cars with natives and they've gotten lost in areas they don't drive in all the time. There was a GPS device in the car one time. You can't just go north, because the road you're on may start heading north and then abrubtly end up going east and you may ultimately end up going south. It's very strange.

So yes, driving. We drove for awhile and came across an abandoned gold mining/processing plant. It's gated and there are signs in Chinese telling people to keep out so we of course went around the gate and went exploring. What? I can't read Chinese. Can you?
It was very cool and worth it.

Here's a shot of one of the buildings.
We are now on the inside of the gate.
Inside the building in the first pic.

The rest of the pics are on my facebook for those of you who have access to that.
For those of you who don't here's a link to my flickr page with the pics.

Oh yes, the cafe that serves waffles. We did in fact find it and the waffle was quite tasty. I also had some delicious iced fruit tea.
The place is called the Cafe de Always Sunshine. It was very cute and cosy inside.

Here's a pic of my fruit tea, just because I really liked it and the little pitcher it was served in.