The cousins (Chin-yeo, Yu-teng, Aenoch, Lapoe, Emily, Donna and I) took a hike to have lunch by the waterfalls. To get to the trail, we had to take a little putt-putt train over the face of the mountain. On one side of the tracks, you could reach out and grab ferns. On the other, was a sheer drop of up to maybe 50 meters. The train tracks were being repaired as we rode them, which did not lend a sense of confidence -- you can see the piles of steel members that are *not yet* holding up the tracks! It was misty and foggy and cool.
The train arrived at a long platform, and the trail began as a kind of rough sidewalk just to one side. It soon turned in a stone-paved path that turned back on itself every so often, and pretty much went *strait down* through a mossy, second growth hillside. We stopped to take alot of pictures! The switchbacks made great stopping points. Lapoe explained how Aenoch used to torture him with fright by shaking him at the edge of high places. Donna, got to take the pictures so she would not have to be in them, but then, there she is with cameras.
The forest is still littered with many old growth trees, and there were several right along the trail. There was much staring upward and craning of necks. And picture taking. But it's impossible to capture the scale and totality of these giants.
As we continued to descend, at one switchback, the nature of the forestscape abruptly changed. It was suddenly full of tangled vines, and nothing seemed to stand strait. The feeling of being surrounded by all this is very hard to describe and show, so of course we took a lot of pictures.
Soon we could hear the waterfall, or rather water falls -- there were three right together. One large tree actually bridged over the trail, and we had to slip under. The triangular opening was made of these incredibly sinewy roots, covered with growth, but rubbed bare in sopts and slick from the fog. It made an other-worldly image. We had a hard time deciding which side was more photogenic. At the lower switchbacks, we could see a view of the valley now above us. Unbelievably, the trail grew steeper and it washed out at one point. At this point we all started worrying about the walk back up!
Then the forest ended, and the rush of the water became louder. And we could see the smaller, lower falls. We turned a corner, and we could see the main falls. There was a smallish pond with several big flat rocks. We picked a large, dry one for lunch -- the splash of the falls behind us and the valley in front of us.

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