Sun Moon Lake

Another trip for the Beaudry's! And this time it was to the heart of Taiwan, one of the few tourist attractions not near the coast, the beautiful Sun Moon Lake! The lake is turquoise blue and surrounded by mountains. While it's very touristy, the natural beauty is still very well preserved.

We stayed one night, and that was plenty since many of the popular Sun Moon Lake activities are very active, and after our trip to Taroko, we weren't very interested in hiking or biking! It's pretty easy to find places to rent bicycles or scooters and there is a bounty of trails all around the lake. There are a lot of temples and scenic outlooks around for photo ops. And there are plenty of places to stay and eat and tons of options for taking a boat across the lake between any of the three main piers.

We stayed in Shuishe, which is one of the main villages around the lake. It's very touristy but still quite small. It has a very nice pier with eateries and hotels and boat tours. You can take a trail from the pier that goes around the lake. Very nice views and lots going on.

Probably my favorite part of the trip was recommended to us by the people at our hotel. We got up early (not quit enough early for sunrise, which was the original intent - hit snooze on that alarm!) and headed out to the lake. It was so quiet and calm, something we don't experience much here in Taiwan, and the silhouette of the mountains over the water was gorgeous. 

We took a boat across the lake to Ita Thao, where there is a little street market and a cable car ropeway up the mountain. The ropeway is definitely a tourist trap for the price, but you get a great view of the lake. And the ropeway is actually more for the purpose of transportation to the Formosan Aboriginal Culture Village amusement park. We didn't go because it was a little pricey, and we're headed to Disneyland next weekend, but we've heard it's pretty fun.

The last stop on our boat route was the Xuangang pier. Be warned that there is literally nothing at this pier but a temple, unlike the villages at the other piers. The temple does have a nice view of the lake, though. And most boat tours automatically include a stop at all three piers. And it was here that one of the strangest things happened to us. An elderly Asian woman came and sat down next to us on a bench and tried to communicate to us (in Chinese, of course) that she wanted her husband to take a picture of her with us...presumably, because we are white people, which is apparently on par with celebrity here in Asia. That's something that would never happen in the Western world. 

Overall, Sun Moon Lake was a nice little trip and is fairly easy to get to. We took a train to the Taichung station and hopped on the Nantou Bus that went all the way to the Shuishe Visitor's Center (a few minutes walk from Sun Moon Lake). The bus also stops at the Taichung High Speed Rail station.  

Taroko National Park

This past weekend, the Beaudry's headed across the country to the beautiful east coast of Taiwan to visit Taroko National Park. It is a massive park, and I'm sure there are many sights we didn't get to, but we did hit some of the top spots, and we were blown away by the beauty of this park! It was truly incredible. We highly highly recommend a visit to anyone who may ever have the opportunity to go.

We stayed at the Liwu Hostel, which is literally right outside of the park. The location was perfect for visiting Taroko, but it was pretty much out in the middle of nowhere (a welcome change from chaos of Asian city life, but a little inconvenient). We ate pretty much every meal at 7-11 because that was the only place we could get food within walking distance, but it wasn't so bad. Taiwanese 7-11's are awesome. The hostel itself was definitely cheap (by cost and quality), but it's hard to give a fair review because it was our first ever hostel experience. We ended up spending more time there than expected since there is pretty much nothing to do after nightfall in a pretty wide radius of the park, but there wasn't anyone else in our room, and it ended up working out fine.

Our very first adventure in the park was the foolish decision to look at the trail map and pick the most difficult trail we could find...that happened to go straight up a mountain. We were unprepared to say the least, and a few days later, we still can hardly walk from the soreness in our legs. But we got a good four hour workout in, some pretty priceless pictures, and had plenty of time to relate our literal mountain climbing to our lives in a metaphorical way. So all in all, it was a successful misadventure.

Next, we worked some magic to figure out the park bus system (figuring out any kind of bus system in a Chinese-speaking country is always a blasty-blast). The bus took us to Swallow Grotto, which is a very popular and picturesque section of the Taroko Gorge.

We started Day 2 by taking the short walk out to the Shakadang Trailhead. This trail was definitely one of my favorite parts of the park. It goes right along the cliff through a particularly beautiful, turquoise blue section of river. And we even found a spot where we could walk right out into the river, so we could literally dip our toes in the waters of the Taroko Gorge.

Buluowan is another stop on the bus route that feels a lot more rustic and woodsy than some of the other parts of the park. There wasn't much to do there, but we did catch some great views.

We hopped back on the bus to head to the Tunnel of Nine Turns, another must-see, according to our research. It didn't seem to be much of a must-see anymore, however. Even though it was definitely a beautiful stretch of the gorge, it was extremely dangerous! There are "Beware of Falling Rocks" signs all over the gorge, but here, you could actually see the fallen rocks and damage they have caused. For fear of our safety, we didn't stay there very long!

The Eternal Shrine is dedicated to the nearly 500 people that died building the road through the park (and after spending some time on it, I can understand why). It was a nice little touristy stop to end our Taroko adventure.

Taroko National Park! Everyone should go!