Cliff Diving

Yesterday I met a pretty athletic grad student from the lab next door and he invited me to go 跳海, cliff diving, with him and his friends this morning. We left NTOU at 6 am and rode motorcycles to a rocky area in 潮境. First we had to climb down from the road area and trek through rocky areas to get to the edge near the water. The rocks weren't that high, and the cliff wasn't very tall either, probably 1 or 2 stories. But we were at the edge of the shoreline and there were big waves coming in from the sea. There was a stump piled up at the highest point, and we jumped off from there into the ocean. The water was deep enough and actually pretty clear. One of the jumps I tried head first, after seeing someone else jump first. Pretty scary. While swimming in the ocean, I saw a school of fish swimming and crabs crawling through the reefs. The grad student and I swam towards a rock about 50 meters away and looked at the sea creatures along the way. Then we decided to attempt a swim towards a building-like structure in the middle of the ocean further away. It didn't look that far from the cliff, but when we were actually in the water swimming, we realized how far it was. Halfway through our swim, we looked at each other, and decided to swim back. The waves got bigger and bigger the further out we swam and it also got windier. Better to swim back before it got too dangerous.

Now I'm so exhausted from swimming in the ocean. Takes a lot of effort and energy to swim in open water.

Stump we jumped off of. 

The structure we tried swimming towards. It's a tough journey.