12 Days in Taiwan – Day 02 – Strawberry Farm

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Before departure, I collated a weather projection over the twelve days we’d be in Taiwan, and it didn’t look encouraging: the weather was going to be a mix of fierce overcasts and varying degrees of rain. We had to keep our fingers crossed for good weather, since so much of our itinerary this trip was going to be outdoors. And we got lucky on Day 2, or actually the first full day of sight-seeing on our trip: the weather was sunny and bright — even if the day during this winter season was still short.

The company we engaged is named The Taichung Driver, and proudly claims to be — “probably” — the only English-speaking driver in the city. Funnily, while the back-and-forth correspondence leading up to the trip was done in English, our actual driver — nicknamed “King Kong” — assigned to us over the next four days spoke mostly Mandarin to us. No, we’re not complaining since Kong is a really friendly fellow (I reckon he’s in his late 30s). And we could converse just fine, even if my spoken Mandarin is halting.

Ever mindful of how much daylight we had to work with, we would have been quite happy to head out early in the morning and get on with our first place of visitation. But Kong had other ideas: it’s apparently a Taiwanese thing that your guests need to be well-fed first! So, we stopped by a small cafe for sandwiches and hot/warm drinks first. The eatery was staffed by lasses, and in what is starting to seem like the norm on the island, they were very polite and helpful in explaining what their recommended offerings were. The meal of three sandwiches and drinks was affordably priced at NTD185/SGD8.20, but we were rearing to start checking out places on the day’s itinerary!

A quiet cafe for breakfast.
Cute decor at the cafe entrance.
Our Taichung guide and driver is fairly beefy and aptly named! Peter loves him already.
Our driver really took a lot of photos… of us! At the end of the first day and just shortly after he dropped us off, I received a stack of 50+ pictures from him — many of them were gems. If only I could get the large-sized versions though!
Location of our breakfast cafe.

Our next stop was one of the several strawberry farms in Houli. The one we visited is fairly small and run by an elderly couple. But there weren’t any other visitors besides us, so we had the entire place to ourselves. Like the other farms, you pay for what you’ve picked — and since we weren’t bringing the picked fruit back to Singapore, we plucked only whatever we could finish in a couple of days. The strawberries — to use the wife’s words — were some of the juiciest, sweetest and softest specimens she’d ever tasted, and the kids agreed too! I’m averse to strawberries, but I’ll take their word for it LOL.

Peter under Ling’s watchful guidance on which fruit to pick.
H was old enough to go about it on her own.
Lots of succulent strawberries everywhere!
The Tamron 70-200mm f2.8 + MC-11 was out here in its first major test. The pictures of our two kids at the farm were all taken at standoff distance, many at about 200mm focal length.
We read of one farm that has elevated fruit beds apparently, reducing the strain on the back when picking fruits. The farm we went to is a lot more traditional and had no such amenities.
Can’t wait to eat them!
The picked fruit getting weighed.
I’m the only one in the family who doesn’t have a thing for strawberries!
Location of the strawberry farm we visited.

Our next stop was Shengxing Station!