19 March 2012
Yangmingshan national park
Nearby the area of Beitou is a massive national park with a heap of mountains in it.
A couple of the peaks are just over 1000 metres, so nothing massive, but still it took me from 8:30 AM until 3:00 PM to get to the top of one of them and back down to a bus stop.
During this time I was probably not walking for maybe an hour, and most of that was taken up waiting for a phantom bus in the fog which had rolled in leaving me completely disorientated.
Also, theres no water or drinks available on the trail anywhere, so if you go here, bear that in mind.
I took a lot of pictures, I have culled most of them.
I got off the train and it was 20 minutes until the bus came, so I decided to walk to the start of the trail, which took a while!
If I was doing this again I would wait for the bus, but I was too excited.
I think I was heading for that peak in the background on the right.
In case I get lost, which I did, but at which point this proved to be useless anyway.
Once you start on the trail, you head through peoples houses and crops. This seems to happen a lot in Taiwan. Several old people had what I assume is political talk back radio blaring as they planted their soy.
Soon enough the steps start. So many steps. The bamboo was planted only fairly recently, but has taken over. There were a heap of lizards everywhere. Little ones darting about.
Across the valley on top of another hill is the Chinese cultural university. They seem to be blaring announcements from loudspeakers that carry across the greater Taiwan straight.
Some way up you get to a temple. I then got lost, and ended up walking up a road for quite a while. This means I walked a lot further than I had to.
I tried to re find the path around the temple, but kept coming to packs of wild dogs and dead ends. I never saw another person!
Pausing to look back down. The path was great quality the whole way. Its a bit mind boggling that they built it all. It is however very slippery when you go down.
I guess I am about half way up. The forest was very thick and there werent many spots where you could see to take a photo. Which was a bit concerning cause I couldnt tell from which direction I had come.
This would prove to be even more concerning later.
More view
View the other way.
A sign is good, but no map? No bathroom? Not really a problem as I was there alone. No vending machine or water of any kind? You can actually drive up to this point which kind of ruins it for me. But there was as I said no one around.
Someones been here to light the candles and put the fruit in this thing to frighten away evil spirits. Still it had no effect on me.
OK, thanks for the warning.
Shit! I pulled my socks up.
Some way up the summit climb.
At the summit now. I passed one guy coming down in the other direction, he seemed surprised to see me.
Another photo from the summit. I had walked all the way from the train station at the very bottom which I think is on the right edge of this photo.
I decided to continue on. Surely the way down the other side is shorter right? Here is looking back up to the top, now covered in cloud/fog/mist.
Now I am completely lost! Where did the city go?
After at least another hours walk, I go to the flower farm area, and there were other people about, and a bus stop!
I waited for what seemed like forever for a bus that never came. Other people waited periodically too before moving on or taking a taxi which they called.
Now the fog rolled in and I couldnt see across the road. However after descending through the fog I eventually came to a bus stop which had an LED board informing me the bus was coming.
Once I got on it, to get back to where I started from took ages, as it had to drive around the mountains nearer the bottom.
Back near the station, and theres some thermal hot springs. Lots of hotels nearby cater for Japanese tourists, which I find strange as they have plenty of their own hot springs. However I actually saw some Taiwanese people in Kimonos lined up practicing aragato gozeyemus