We’ve had seven days of fairly good weather this trip so far, but on day 8, it poured on the northern-eastern part of Taiwan. That was a real bummer, as a good part of our itinerary on day 8 and also 9 are outdoors.
We were dropped off by our Hualien minsu uncle at the station, and our express rail ride back to Taipei (population 2.7 million in 2018) was uneventful, as was also a quick dinner at Hama Sushi near our place of stay. Today Day 08’s plan is a pretty standard itinerary that’s followed by most visitors to north-east Taiwan and will involve three places with options for a few more side-activities. The three places are Yehliu Geopark where there are a number of unique geological formations that sit on a cape; Shifen, and old town built around a railroad that originally transported coal when Taiwan was a Japanese colony, and finally Jiufen, an old gold mining town likewise. Both of the latter are now major tourist spots with Shifen where you can inscribe your hopes and wishes to a lantern and launch it skywards, and Jiufen – with the A-Mei Teahouse reportedly serving as the inspiration to scenes in Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away film.
Many tours will include all three stops in a single day tour, and all three places did really feel crowded with dozens of large buses offloading visitors – though the impact of mass tourism feels different place to place. For this post I’ll write about the Geo Park, and two stops later that we went to after we covered Shifen.
Ah Yehliu Geopark – what Taiwan boasts as among some of its most unique natural formations on the island. The odd sandstone shapes have been caused by weather and erosion over hundreds of years if not more. We arrived at the the park at 8:45AM, and there were already other early tour-buses dropping off their visitors. The combination of rain and also coastal winds meant that raincoats were a must, since there’s a good possibility that umbrellas will just get blown away into the sea. The coastal winds here weren’t as strong as what we experienced on Day 2’s Gaomei Wetlands (the latter felt like a gale!), but the rain made things just that bit harder. While it wasn’t quite what I’d call a torrential downpour, there was still enough water coming from the clouds up top and more from the sides which were sea facing that I didn’t dare bring out the Sony A73. The Samsung Note 9 on the other hand is fully water-proof, so the smartphone pulled picture-taking duty this time.
A large number of tourists at the park were also wielding their selfie sticks doing all manners of Instagram poses with the geological formations. Several were even trying to climb or step on the formations, which promptly led to a shrill whistle sounding off by the attending park wardens and yelling at the visitor(s) to get off. Disgraceful.
The formations were interesting in themselves, but I didn’t enjoy this visit. The combination of crowds and rain pretty much made me want to get out of this spot as soon as I could!
The Shifen stop was more memorable – I’ll write about it in the next post – after which we continued onward for a quick look at Yin Yang Sea. Our driver and guide, Checo, explained that the unusual hue of coloration in the water is a result of chemical runoff, despite the fact that the coal and gold mines in the region have long since closed for decades now. We weren’t able to see significant coloration, though I reckon that had to do with the rainy weather in the early afternoon we visited.
The next stop was just nearby – the Golden Waterfall, so named not because there’s gold flowing in the waters, but the result of metal deposits in the riverbed. There’s a viewing gallery at the waterfall that will offer uninterrupted views of the falls – and it’s quite pretty. There’s not much to do other than take pictures here, so we visited, check it out, took pictures, and scooted back into the car to escape the rain.
So, not a particularly good day: and I blame it all on the weather. Next post covers the Shifen bits of Day 08!
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