7 May 2023
No see view of sea
Caoling trail from Fulong station to Dali station
A double up of hiking, yesterday and today. Today's was a bit easier, 12km or 20,000 steps, and only about 600m of elevation gain, all on developed trails.
Just over 1000 years ago, when Taiwan was still attached to the mainland and the Philippines all within the 11 dash line, the Qing dynasty had a highway that allowed you to walk all the way from Beijing to Jakarta. Most of this trail never actually existed, but a small section of it remains in Taiwan, especially 2 rocks, with whimsical names as you shall see below.
It is relatively easy to get to this hike from anywhere, it is just as close to Taipei as it is to Yilan, but everything is close in Taiwan. Rumour has it that there is a bus from Fulong station to the start of the hike, but apparently it does not operate on weekends when people would most likely do the hike, so instead I walked about 4km along the road to where some kind of trail starts. It is well sign posted.
There were surprisingly few people on my way up, it seems a lot more people start at Dali, go to the top, and walk back down to Dali, and after seeing how slippery the rocky steps were on the way up, and how relatively un slippery they were on the way down to Dali, this makes a lot of sense to me.
I took a lot of pics, so more misinformation under each pic.
Fulong station, there is a convenience store here and even a Starbucks, this is important info for later, there is nothing at Dali!
I walked along the highway, then made one turn up another road that goes over the train track. Great skies! Still no rain today despite the threatening skies.
The road up to the hike was very peaceful, I expected a lot of traffic consisting of people going to the hike, there was none.
Nice farmland, I am going up over that bit in the fog. I did not want there to be fog today, oh well.
Incense burner.
The trail follows a river for much of its journey, which helps keep everything damp, mossy and very slippery.
These steps look fine, but I cannot figure out how they are so slippery!
The journey up was like walking through a forest garden. There were zero other people for a couple of hours.
Here is the fist of the road markers, evidently, the inscription says, 'boldly quell the wild mists'. Is this truly an ancient rock inscription or a re-creation?
This pavilion marks about the half way point. There are toilets here, but since I had not seen another soul, I decided to just do an open air sprinkler, complete with sound effects.
I popped out of the forest, and into dense fog. It is near here that you are supposed to get the view of the coast. Not for me today!
The second ancient roadside marker, this one just says tiger. I am yet to see a tiger in Taiwan. Last year I had a guy tell me his father was eaten by a tiger on a hiking trail in Korea.
Some way down the non slippery more developed side, I saw a sign pointing to 'ancient inn ruins', which as you can see was along a very mossy path. I guess this is the ruins.
This is the best I could do for a view, more than half way down, and still half in fog.
Nearly back at the bottom, and there is a cafe, which I think is also the ranger station.
I saw another signpost, nature trail to lookout. The steps were of the non rocky non slippery kind, so up I went.
Here is the view. Cut the damn trees down! Even standing on the seats I could not get a view.
I was almost back at the bottom, I could smell burning rubbish, this means only one thing, a giant temple ahead!
Behold, the Dali temple, that seems to actually be it's name.
All the way out there, with cloud on it, is Turtle Island. It is a very popular spot to go to by boat, but hard to casually arrange, you kind of need to book a day long tour that takes in meals and bus transfers and jade shopping.
Have a bit more temple, it is massive.
Under the temple is a food court! Stinky tofu time!
Last shot of the temple.
Over the road, or on the road itself, is a religious procession about to start. A guy at the back blows a whistle as trucks approach at speed, that will protect them! It could actually be a funeral, but I do not see any trucks full of strippers hanging off poles (that is a real thing, look it up!).
To get to the train station, you go under the road. Cool.
This allowed me to get a view along the coast, those are the small mountains I came over today, still in fog.
I walked along the coast a bit to go to Dali old street, that is the train station on the left.
And here is Dali old street, and a very old sad looking cat, and not much else. No shops, not even a convenience store, not even a vending machine.
Dali station, the end of my hike for today. A very small station, only the slowest of slow local trains stop here, but it is still only about 30 minutes back to Yilan.
Final pic, I just missed a fast train going past, so just the tracks, and a mesh fence.