12 Days in Taiwan – Day 02 – Gaomei Wetlands

We stayed at Zhongshe Tourism Flower Market until about a quarter to three. Back in Singapore, the mid-day sun would be at its zenith and warmest at this time. But in Taichung, the sun was already starting to duck behind thick cloud cover, and the 2:45PM was pretty much looking like 5:45PM at this point back home. /sad.

The amount of daylight left notwithstanding, Kong quipped that since we were too early to observe sunset at Gaomei Wetlands, we’d check out the other side of the wetlands first instead to get a really close look of the wind turbines. This was a great spot as there were few other tourists in the general area: most visitors would zero into the wetlands right away. From the number of wind turbines in the approximate area, one could get the sense that Taichung is really setting an example in renewable energy for others to follow.

Our guide was not kidding when he said “hold onto your kids!” The first indications of how strong winds were in the coast was
when I attempted to open the car door and feeling like I was trying to push a large metal sheet against fearsome winds! As soon as we finally forced the car doors opened, we were blasted face-front with the super strong coastal winds.

There are numerous rows of wind turbines whose blades were turning majestically with the wind.

The wife has climbed Mt. Everest. The coastal winds blasting her from behind should be nothing to her. Really!

P was struggling not to be blown away, so held onto our driver’s pants for dear life. The two girls were game to sit on the sea wall for pictures: H quipped that the wind was just nearly strong enough to blow her off!

Our short stop done, we drove for another 5 minutes down to the Gaomei Wetlands boardwalk itself. The wetlands itself is another one of the most popular spots for visitors to Taichung, and it showed: there were several hundreds of visitors on the boardwalk leading out into the sea, and more exploring the general vicinity and stretch of eateries that faces the board. Kong mused that the area can get so congested that the road that leads into the wetlands becomes there is no more parking available anywhere. So, the local authorities barred all vehicular traffic coming in, necessitating all vehicles to stop a further distance away and walk the kilometer or two in, or board a shuttle bus to travel the distance. That didn’t go very well with visitors, so that order was rescinded.

He also warned us to make sure that the kids stayed as far as possible in the middle when we were on the boardwalk. And that was very good advice: the billowing north-south winds were strong that it actually requires effort not to get blown off the boardwalk! No, the wind isn’t strong enough to blow an adult off the boardwalk, but it’s the wind force is enough for an adult to lose balance if he isn’t careful.