We headed out at 7am on a Friday morning and first went to two places before getting all the way down to Hengchun: the Chelungpu fault museum and Moonworld. The fault museum had an extensive replica of a cross section of the fault that was paired with a light display which walked students through the different formational eras of the fault. It was HUGE, which helped us understand the scale of what we were talking about beyond what we could see in a textbook. Moonworld was a shift, as it had nothing to do with what was under the earth but was all about what was on top of it. It consists of these extremely steep formations that are made of nearly exclusively mudstone. Rare intense uplift in the area accompanied by frequent erosion due to rain and the impermeability of the mudstone are crucial to Moonworld’s formation. After this, we continued down to Kending, a small beach town where we would be based for the weekend. In addition to this being an academic venture, it was a great way to connect with other students at NTU, Taiwanese and international alike.

The next day, we headed to spots up and down the peninsula, starting at Jialeshui on the eastern side, where we collected data on the sandstone/mudstone beds to make our own stratigraphic maps, and moved southward to Longpan park, a coral reef platform that rose to become a cliff overlooking the coast! After lunch, we headed to Baolichi, which was a similar formation to Moonworld, and then to Shimen Battlefield to apply our knowledge in identifying different types of igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks. Honestly, it was much harder than expected - the sheer number of rocks that look wildly different but were the same classification was frustrating, to say the least. 

The last full day we had there was by far my favorite. We started off by climbing around coastal coral reefs at Maobitou and Wanlin that had risen just above sea level, so all the corals were dead. But we were able to easily see dead corals, how rain and sea spray dissolved the limestone coast, and how vegetation was able to create “mystery holes” in large rocks. Being able to scurry over the raggedy corals by the ocean was a welcome change from the busy streets of Taipei. After the seaside, we went tromping through the jungle and skidded down the side of the former Sangou lagoon to go fossil hunting! Armed with a tiny shovel and all the determination of an amateur geologist, I started digging away without much direction. But my spirit paid off, because I found a crab fossil embedded in a rock a bit bigger than the size of a baseball. I had no idea what it was, but upon seeing my professors’ reaction, realized it must have been something special. Our group got some major bonus points for sure! This day ended with a BBQ with all of the students and teachers on the trip, a great way to end all the 7:30AM – 9:30PM days.