We've all been talking for forever it seems like about going up to Alishan to see a sunrise. We were told how beautiful it is up there and that it's something you cannot miss in Taiwan so the weekend of May 21-23 we finally made it there. Because of Typhoon Morakot in August, quite a bit of damage is still evident in the area and the trains are still not functional, which made transportation a bit difficult.
Cassandra, Jacquelyn, and I took a train from Hualien up to Taipei, then the High Speed Train from Taipei, down the west coast to Chiayi. We didn't arrive there until after 10pm and then had to wait for a Taxi to take us into the mountain. The taxi took about two to two and a half hours I believe, and it could only go so far. There was a point where you hit a gate and you have to have a license to enter that part of the mountain, which is where our hotel was (where Karin, Staycie, and Avrum were waiting on us). So, when the taxi got to that point, the oh so kind employee of the hotel drove down to pick us up and drive us back in to the hotel. We got there and went to sleep around 2am, then had a wake-up call at 4:30 to start our hike for sunrise.
I'm not gonna lie, that 50min hike was rough (for me anyway, haha). I mean I've been hitting the gym pretty hard lately but whew, that was some hike. Maybe it was the 8 hours of travel followed by 2 hours of sleep but I was a bit nauseous when we arrived at the top. We actually got there in plenty of time to take LOTS of pictures of the quickly changing scenery as the sun was rising. I still have yet to sort through them all and figure out which ones are redundant or not as pretty.
After the sunrise, we walked back down and then it was nap time! Amazing!
We woke up, did some more hiking (much easier hiking) around the area, captured some more photos of the incredible sights around us, and met back together for lunch before parting ways.
Cassandra and Jacque headed off to Tainan to attend a wedding and visit Cass's family, Staycie headed back to Taipei, and Karin, Avrum, and I hopped on a shuttle and headed off to another mountain for more sightseeing extravaganzas. When we got to Rueili we walked around the quaint, tea-growing village, had a delicious Taiwan dinner, saw a bear in a cage randomly in the street, and then met others back at our hotel for the night-time "stroll" to go see the fireflies. The stroll ended up being much further along the scary mountain road than I thought it would be and the "glorious field with dazzling specks of fireflies hoover over the tall grass" that I had envision was actually just walk, stop, point into trees along side of road, oh look, 3 fireflies. It wasn't exactly what we thought it was going to be but still fun just for the experience. (When I think about it, I don't really know why I had the vision I did, it wasn't false advertisement, I guess just overactive imagination haha).
When we returned we of course had to play a competitive game of Phase 10 before bed. In the morning we were all set to head off to see a GORGEOUS waterfall, BUT, it was raining so hard we couldn't. With the landslides that part of the mountains have been having it wouldn't have been safe for us so the owner of the hotel drove us back down to the safety of Chiayi and we caught an earlier train back home. I was disappointed because the waterfall really did look spectacular but I was exhausted too and glad to get home earlier and rest.
This is the waterfall we wanted to go see....but
This is all we got to see of the waterfall, haha, a picture in our hotel.
No comments:
Post a Comment