Yangmingshan National Park (陽明山國家公園) - Part I (Mt Qixing)

Yangmingshan National Park 陽明山國家公園 is one of the nine national parks in Taiwan. It is located in the north of Taipei and is one of the most popular mountains in Taiwan, both for foreigners and for locals.

We can actually see Yangmingshan every day from our bedroom window. If the sky is clear, we can see the mountain tops. When airplanes land in Songshan Airport, the view is fantastic from where we stand.

Yangmingshan view from our bedroom window.

The national park offers great hiking, hot springs, lakes, flower blossoms, (stinking) sulfur deposits and several nice sceneries. Since there are so many trails, one must go there several times, because you really can't make them all within one day.

In the mid of October, we took Bus No 260 on the north side of the Taipei Main Station, North Exit 2. You can also consider it as just behind the Main Station opposite to Qsquare Mall. It is in front of a statue called Ai Fu with a kid and a father.
The bus trip took nearly 50min and cost 15NTD + 15NTD and it will pass by for example Jiantan Station (Shilin Night Market). We arrived to the Yangmingshan terminal station which is a big parking lot with lots of other buses and people.

 Yangmingshan terminal station.

The map of Yangmingshan.

 The Mt Qixing trail starts from this point.

From here, we walked a short trail of about 700m to the visitor center. Already on this short trail I thought it was quite tough. After we asked a couple of questions at the visitor center, we started our hiking on the Mt Qixing 七星山 trail. It says it is 2.4km to the top and takes about 2h. The trail was quite demanding, I must say.

We saw lots of funny things on our way: We met a man carrying an ubike around his neck when he was on his way down from the main peak. That's really impressive, because those bikes, which people can rent for free the first 30min, are not light. We also saw one guy wearing leather shoes, suit pants and a shirt. Furthermore, we saw people with other casual leather shoes, two men without shoes and very small kids hiking with grandparents. What surprised me and impressed me the most are all the old people being so active. Hiking and enjoying the nature is something they really like!

Mt Qixing is a dormant volcano and the main peak is 1120m above sea level. There are two peaks; East and Main. They are only about 300-400m from each other. The main peak is the highest in the whole Yangmingshan National Park. Even though it is just 1120m above sea level, it really took 2h to hike from the visitor center. We didn't even take a break.

On the east peak, there was a small stone indicating the top. We sat down and had some sandwiches that we bought before taking the bus. For two very hungry and weak persons lacking energy, they were very delicious. A lot of other people also took a lunch break there. Although it was not so high up, it was quite chilly up there, just around 18C. We were standing right in the middle of the clouds. Too bad it was too cloudy, because we couldn't really see any nice view from here.

After a short lunch break around 14.00, we walked to the main peak where we saw a big wood pole indicating its height and other stuff. There were a lot of people taking a break on the big benches. I bet most of them felt satisfaction and relief in their bodies after reaching the mountain top. For some of them, maybe it's their first time too. Like us.

After just a short break, we walked the Xiaoyoukeng 小油坑 trail down to the point where we could catch a bus. Our plan was first to walk from that point to Zhuzihu 竹子湖, which should be a nice place in the spring time when flowers blossom. Don't be fooled by the character 湖 (which stands for lake) in the name, because there is no lake there.

East peak of Mt Qixing.

Main peak of Mt Qixing.

 East peak.

Main peak.

Walking down is much easier than walking up of course and this 1.7km went faster. However, we stopped a few times along the road. There is a nice view point here and we could both see the city of Taipei and some other mountain tops. Also, we passed a couple of stinking sulfur deposits on the way down. They really smelled like a bad fart. Not only did they smell like rotten eggs, but they also looked like smashed eggs. It is cool learning that the volcano is still "spitting" out these kinds of stuff. Or rather, these are actually post-volcanic activities.

One of many sulfur deposits.

When we finally came down to Xiaoyoukeng, it was nearly 16.00 and the mini bus (No 108) was just there and about to leave. We didn't even have time for a small recovery, but needed to jump on the overcrowded bus. It was more like a roller coaster than a bus ride. It was basically throwing us from left to right and right to left if you don't hold on too well. We passed a few stops and saw interesting places like a foot hot spring (Lengshuikeng), the Suspension bridge (Lengshuikeng) and some other trails.

View from Xiaoyoukeng view point.

Panorama view from Xiaoyoukeng view point.

We just wanted to go back to the Yangmingshan terminal station to take Bus No 260 back to Taipei Main Station. We didn't want to stop to see the other places at all since we felt exhausted.

Reaching the peaks of Mt Qixing made us feel very satisfied. I believe we will come back to hike some other trails before going back to Sweden.

Hualien (花蓮) Weekend with Taroko Gorge and Dolphin Safari

Hualien 花蓮 is a small city with about 300000 inhabitants on the east coast of Taiwan. It is actually the second largest city on the east side. It faces the Pacific Ocean on the east side and the Central mountain range on the west side.

I have heard about Taroko Gorge 太魯閣 for many years and my taxi driver, whom I usually book when I land in Taipei, asked me to go there since before. I could book him anytime. However, I didn't want to wake up so early and have a full day with him. Also, the price of 4000-5000NTD is quite expensive and you probably don't have time to see other things around the city of Hualien either.
Therefore, we wanted to go there by ourselves and spend a weekend in Hualien just to see what it could offer. It is also good to see something else than Taipei all the time.

My colleague helped me book train tickets online to Hualien. You can only book the tickets two weeks in advance. A return ticket costs about 900NTD/pers.

Train to Hualien.

We booked a hostelry called Lienfook, which was quite cheap. The standard was really bad, but since we just slept there, we could live with it.
We wanted to see more of the city so booking three nights there during a longer weekend was preferred. Moreover, even though there are some hotels or resorts up in the Taroko mountains, it is very isolated and you will have basically nothing to do. If you stroll around in the city, like we like to do, you'd better stay in Hualien.

Taroko National Park was re-established 1986 and is one of the nine national parks in Taiwan. This park is named after the Taroko Gorge, which is the landmark of the park. Did you know Taroko means "magnificent and beautiful" in the so called Truku language? This area is well known for its marble. It was actually the river called Liwu that carved the gorge itself into marble.
The rock you see began over 200 million years ago as sediment on the bottom of the ocean. Did you also know that the region is still being uplifted by approximately 0.5cm every year?

We went there in the mid of September and the weather started becoming milder. The train trip took about 2h in a very comfortable train compartment with spacious seats. You can even put your
luggage before you. The train left and arrived on time. This ride will take you along the northern east coast, then further down south and you will see quite many nice places if you look out of the window. You can even see the famous Turtle Island if the weather is nice.

When we arrived in Hualien, we immediately looked for a taxi to take us to our hostelry Lienfook somewhere more down town. What surprised me were the number of female taxi drivers. That's good, actually. We asked hotel receptionist for a day trip to Taroko Gorge and agreed to pay 1000NTD/pers. We didn't know if they will pick us up with a van or a tour bus. It depends on the number of tour travellers, they said.

We had a quite chill first day there. We went to Nanbin Park near the water and chilled there for a while. In the evening we walked on the shopping street down town.

Nanbin Park.

Nanbin Park.

The main shopping street of Hualien.

The next morning around 9:00, a tour guide lady came to pick us up from the lobby and luckily it was a big tour bus. After driving around to pick up another 20 people or so, we were finally on our way to Taroko National Park. This lady was telling a lot of stories and other things, but my mandarin is limited so we didn't understand much. It took nearly 45min to reach to the gate of Taroko National Park, which is located north of Hualien. We stopped there for some pics and drove further up to some kind of headquarter or visitor center. We found a trail and we walked just a little bit before turning back since we had a schedule to follow.

The bus took us to to several other places like Swallow Grotto 燕子口, Tunnels of Nine Turns 九曲洞 and Liufang Bridge 流芳橋. At lunch time, we arrived to a hostel, near Tianxiang 天祥, with a quite big canteen where we had a so-so lunch. Afterwards, they took us to a place called Qingshui Cliff 清水斷崖 where you can see clear distinct blue water if the weather is nice. On that day, it was a quite grey, but the water was still blue enough to make it beautiful. The last location we went to was the beach called Qixingtan Beach 七星潭. We were home around 17.00.

 The gate of Taroko National Park.

Liufang Bridge.

Liufang Bridge.

Tianxiang.

Qingshui Cliff.

Qixingtan Beach.

All in all, this tour was neither excellent nor bad. At least, for people like us who have never been there, it was great to "investigate" this place before eventually going there again.

When we arrived to our hostelry after the tour, we booked a Whale & Dolphin Safari for 800NTD/pers on the coming day. Our expectation was of course to see some Killer whales, but they told us the biggest chance is to see dolphins "only". We have been on Dolphin Safari in Bali before and it was quite OK even though it was on a small boat.

The next morning, the organizer came to pick us up in a van and drove us to the harbor 20-30min from our hotel. We embarked a bigger boat here in Hualien (compared to Bali) with around 40-50 people per boat. There were 5-6 boats on the sea that morning. Not far after we left the harbor, we saw quite many dolphins. As my wife says: "Dolphins want to show off. They are show off animals." Yeah, I guess we saw around 10 wild dolphins swimming and jumping near our boats. We stopped there only for a few minutes and took off further out in the Pacific Ocean. However, we never saw any other dolphins or whales despite driving around for 1.5h out there. It was quite disappointing, but at least we saw some dolphins.

Going out on Whale & Dolphin Safari!

When we came back to town, we had nothing to do after our lunch so we decided to rent a motorbike for 500NTD/day. My wife negotiated down the price with 100NTD. I needed to hand in my ARC in return. I guess it is difficult for foreigners to rent a bike elsewhere, so you can go to this place called Pony Rental in the corner next to Chin Yeh hotel near the train station.

We drove to Taroko around 15:00 and arrived 45min later. It was not as dangerous as I thought since there is a dedicated lane for motorbikes and bicycles.
We came to the Taroko National Park entrance and took another road to see the Eternal Spring Shrine 長春祠. There were a lot of tourists buses already. We missed this place the day before since the tour bus just passed by without mentioning it too much. It was disappointing since this was one of the places I've seen on pictures before and we wanted to stop by and have a look. This place is really beautiful.
So, since we had a motorbike, this was perfect to make up for it. We also hiked the 2.2km long Changchun Trail 長春祠步道 up to the temple and bell tower. From up there, the canyon view was great and it was worth the sweat. It started becoming dark and on our way out of the park, we stopped by at a small creek for a short while.

The gate of Taroko National Park again.

Eternal Spring Shrine.

The bell tower.

Panorama view from the bell tower.

We ended our last night in Hualien with bowling and games (baseball, mini-bowling, basketball, darts, pool, table tennis, etc) at Giraffe Park, which is quite near the train station.

Giraffe Park.

Overall, this weekend trip was nice and it was perfect with just 3 nights there. The city of Hualien is not so impressive and is rather small. More people move out of the city than in to the it and that is understandable. The shore is not so nice and the coastline is very steep, so it is not suitable for swimming. The waves are also too strong.

Hualien Train Station.

What really made this trip memorable was when we rented the motorbike to drive to Taroko and around the city. I filled the tank completely before going, but I still had maybe 80% left even though we drove Taroko back and forth and drove around the city.

This place is also one of the must-go places in Taiwan. Plan a couple of days here if you have a longer stay in Taiwan.

Nanya Rocks (南雅奇岩)

Nanya rock formation 南雅奇岩 is located in the northeast of Taiwan. You can reach there by several options from Taipei. In any case, it includes a bus ride.

We went there by taking the train to Keelung 基隆 and then changed to Bus No 791 towards Fulong 福隆.
The bus departs from Family Mart a short walk from the train station. I'm not sure how frequent this bus goes, but we waited quite a long time.

The bus ride took about 30min and we got off at Nanya bus station and walked a bit east before reaching the strange but beautiful rock formation eroded by the sea, rain and wind. You can especially see two spirals which people say look like ice cream.
It was a hot day in the beginning of September and there were lots of visitors there.

 Our nice Gore-Tex Merrell shoes.

 Not so much for a trail.

 Giant spider!

After spending some time here, we tried to find a trail to the mountain starting from the parking lot, but we could just walk a few hundred meters before we were forced to turn back. One very bad thing here is that there is no special walkway for people to get to the next point even though there are quite many interesting places to visit. We needed to walk back west to the bus station on the dangerous road. We just saw the bus passing by and needed to wait another hour for the next one. So, plan your trip well!
Our plan was to go further east, somewhere in Longdong 龍洞, to find somewhere to hike. We didn't understand the map much so we just took a chance and got off at a random stop, which happened to be Longdong Bay Ocean Park.
We saw a place where people took a swim in the sea. There was also a pool for dogs. From there, we walked up on the mountain and saw the Longdong Cape Trail, which is not very long. Almost in the end of this trail, there is a really nice and steep cliff to view.

 Longdong Bay Ocean Park.

Pool for dogs.

 Longdong Cape Trail.

 Nice cliff.

Around 17:30, it began to darken and we couldn't find a good trail to go back west to catch the bus. Instead, we walked on the dangerous road again when suddenly a woman, standing on a parking spot 20m from us, waved at us to come over to her. We really wanted a ride to any bus station so we crossed the road to see how they could help us. There were 3 young girls in the back of the car and her husband was driving. "This is harmless", we judged, and we got into their car. These kindhearted people then took us back to Keelung and even treated us a nice dinner before we separated and headed home. They even offered us a ride back to Taipei, but we didn't want to bother them so much. We really appreciated their help and kindness.

The scenic area in the northeast was great and it was a pleasant day trip.