Maokong trail from Taipei zoo station
The last hike is completed. More of a long walk between various tourist areas via concrete steps and roads than an actual hike. About 16km station to station, nearly 5 hours, but that included a few wrong turns.
The Maokong trail is section 7 of the Taipei grand trail. I think I ended up doing most of this, or most of the actual good bits that are not walking along a road. I certainly did all the bits in Yangmingshan national park, which is where all the main peaks on the trail are, plus I did the 4 beasts walk (by accident) and now the Maokong trail.
As you shall barely see, Maokong is all about tea. There are cable cars to haul you up into the tea plantations, and lots of people come to do just that. All of them were glaring at me because I was completely drenched with sweat.
I must also mention, no rain, at all! I expected another downpour. So I think that makes 1 actual day of rain on this trip, although yesterday I changed my plan due to rain, there was no actual rain while I was at the zoo. I predicted there would be 10 days of rain out of 28, so I was lucky (again, Korea was the same), and the drought is real.
Back to today's hike. The views were not great due to a combo of weather and pollution, the trail was overly developed (a feature of trails in Taiwan), but the the actual scenery on the trail such as temples, tea houses, farms, rock features formed by ancient cats, was all quite interesting.
The 'hike' started at the Taipei zoo station, same place I was at yesterday, where I was greeted by this statue of a girl suckling a lamb / goat / pony (or are they suckling her?). I have seen these in many countries.
This is the bottom gondola station. I think I called it a cable car above, or is it a ropeway? It is not a funicular railway.
I made a stop here because of their awesome sign.
This is where the stairs start. There are 1000 stairs to the first temple, they are numbered periodically.
Staircase with flags. Very Auspicious. Apparently today a Taiwanese guy won a Taekwondo event in Korea and then decided to be presented with his medal while holding the flag of China, it is big news here, and presumably on the mainland. I just thought I'd throw that in.
What sort of a temple is this? Pentagrams instead of swastika's.
A really great staircase up to this temple, must be good.
At first I was a bit disappointed, sure there is a nice bridge there, but I expected a huge complex, although those stairs going up the hill seem to go nowhere, maybe I will follow them.
Ahh, here we are then, or are we? It is part of Zhinan temple.
It has a nice view, even if it is a polluted grey day.
I actually went back down the stairs, then read the internet that said to go through the temple to continue my journey. Out the back of the bit of the temple shown above, I arrived here. More bigger temple in the distance, lets go.
The main part of Zhinan temple. I keep typing Zhipai which is a pack of cards.
The next stop of the gondola is just past the top of the temple, following the path with all the gold bits of cardboard you pay for to hang in a tree. BTW, today's temple had a sign saying it was the centre of Chinese Taoist culture. So no Buddha.
Crap pic, but instead of riding the gondola, I will walk down, and back up again to the station across the valley there.
The path down was this horrible style, where they construct a stair case, and all the material between stairs washes away or gets compressed, so you trip over the stair with every step. Useless.
A rather ordinary gondola shot from nearer the bottom of the valley. No rain at all!
OK, this little spot here is the entire reason Maokong is called Maokong. The little holes in the rocks in this spot were believed to be made by an ancient giant cat.
Giant cat statues guard the bridge to the area.
Almost at the top gondola station now, and it is a very developed area full of tea houses and cafe's.
I couldn't get me and the gondola in the same shot, but here is my giant sweaty head. People were staying well away from me.
Behold, the upper gondola station.
The 'trail' down from this point goes through a few garden areas like this, with both plastic and stone statues of various things to have your photo taken with. Still no tea to be seen though (in my pictures at least), I had already passed the tea museum.
OK, here is some tea.
Not a great pic, but I left it in as you can see Taipei 101 over on the right.
After wandering through some touristy fields of tea and various other things, I rejoined a 'trail', one last chance to slip over on some moss covered stone?
But wait it gets mossier! But thankfully I did not fall over. All hiking complete, time to clean my shoes with a toothbrush to keep BORDER FORCE!!! happy. Tonight will probably be a shorter outing, but I am still here for most of the day tomorrow before heading to the airport in the afternoon to go to Singapore... more on that, tomorrow.
Xinyi at dusk
Almost certainly, the final beef noodle soup has been eaten. I like it a lot but I think it makes me fat. I think all soups do. Soup which includes fresh hand made dough in the form of noodles, probably more so.
The important thing, was to eat dinner as early as possible, which was almost too late, so that I could get a seat on my own. Sadly I had to eat in a real restaurant, the pic has no tray and there was no buzzer, because all the food courts were already full! Are these people eating a late lunch or an early dinner? Do they have 2 dinners? How would I know.
For my last night in Taiwan I went back to Xinyi, the up market area where Taipei 101 is. I only took one photo of that building tonight, because everyone has seen it enough. Now I am back in my hotel again early, but that was the plan, it is going to be a long couple of days and nights, after tonight, which will be my last proper sleep until Wednesday night!
First up, dinner! A great beef noodle soup. Note the lack of tray, because this is not a food court, but an actual restaurant (near a food court). They were still reluctant to let me despite having small tables unoccupied, I had to reassure them I would eat fast and leave.
The nearby food court was already overflowing at 5:30pm.
This guy is trying to avoid the fee to go up to the top of Taipei 101. But seriously, sadly selling these metal balloons to kids to let go so they float off and choke a dolphin is still a big thing here. I think they are banned in some parts of the world now.
HELL NO! I still have not recovered from paying $7 for one of these.
This photo is here only because it is the ground floor entrance area of a flash department store. Instead of make up and jewellery, people spend their disposable income on bobble heads and pokemon. Like I ranted on already, anime culture for want of a better term, is out of control. Also I am aware there is also a MAC makeup shop in view. But imagine if when you walked into David Jones in Australia you were not greeted by women in lab coats trying to sell you face cream, but instead some kind of blue haired teenager trying to sell you a plastic bikini clad 12 year old girl doll with a sword?
Final Taipei 101 shot? Maybe, I do not know what I will do tomorrow morning.
Some more mall type areas in Xinyi.
Time for some light pollution. Trees are boring on their own, add LED lights.
And while I have taken a shot from the above ground subway stations a few times, here is one in the dark. I guess these are mainly office buildings as there are not a lot of lights on. Tomorrow I do not have to check out, as I overbooked 1 night which I explained earlier, so I probably will go out early, have a coffee or 2, then laze about in my hotel until it is time to go to the airport. Take that as a warning for boring pictures tomorrow.