City Hopping in Taiwan

Unlike most of our holidays, much of our trip to Taiwan was spent staying in cities. Cities are not our favourite places, so we spent much of our time looking for green space in the parks, or arranging day trips to other popular spots... and drinking bubble tea.

After our stay in the beautiful Dulan on the Pacific coast, we spent a night in Taitung, a short distance south of Dulan. Our favourite place here was definitely Liyushan Park. We wandered past the Buddhist Temples, walking up the hill through the forest, daundering from viewpoint to viewpoint. I really like being able to get a view of a city - it helps me get a feel for the place. As we walked the quiet trails, Buddhist music echoed from the temples, creating a wonderful spiritual atmosphere in the park.

Liyushan Park, Taitung City

After our stay in Taitung, we caught the train north to Hualien for three nights. Hualien is the gateway for what is probably Taiwan's most popular National Park - Taroko. We spent very little time in the city, instead opting for two day trips to Taroko. We crammed into busy buses full of walkers to explore the incredible marble landscape of the Park. Humans have shown off their engineering, carving roads and tunnels through the steep mountainsides. There is obviously some amazing walking to be done there, with the most exciting trails requiring permits to be arranged in advance (doh). We enjoyed our walks there, though at times faced the disappointment of hopping off the shuttle bus to find the trail closed. The Park authorities seem to be facing a constant battle with rockfalls. There is signage every 100m or so about rockfall danger - I'm not sure I want to imagine what it's like there after some heavy monsoon rainfall.

Taroko National Park

Taroko National Park

Our final full day was spent exploring Taipei. Taipei boasts lots of "city hiking", so we hopped on the metro to Xiangshan to climb Elephant Mountain and see amazing views of the city, including the towering Taipei 101. It felt really good climbing all those steps, knowing that later that evening we would be travelling back home for over 13 hours. The trails were busy up to the viewpoints, but we turned our walk into a loop and managed to escape the crowds for a while.   

Taipei and Taipei 101 viewed from Elephant Mountain

Finding some quiet trails around Elephant Mountain

Taiwan was an amazing cultural experience. I loved the fruity bubble teas, the way the bin lorries played a tune like ice cream vans do here. I loved the stalls of fresh fruit selling dragonfruit, sugar apples, bananas and oranges. I loved the excitement of wandering through the night markets, wondering what we would have for our dinner (but not so much inhaling the horrendous smell that is stinky tofu). The people were friendly and helpful, and the cities exciting and clean. We saw monkeys. The countryside, restricted largely to the mountains and the east coast, is beautiful, from lush green mountains to the stunning Pacific coastline. I can see why, when the Portuguese first spotted the island, they called it "Ilha Formosa" - "Beautiful island".