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In holiday and adventure mood, the weekend following guanziling and the waterfall, me and Simon got up early and headed to Chiayi.  Here, we baorded a tiny train called the Alpine train, on the Alishan Forest Railway.  This railway climbs up over 2000 metres and takes about 4 hours, but the scenery is awesome - you start in a town and then watch as the palm trees change into alpine forests! And the train winds and winds around crazy steep mountains, it’s amazing how they built it.

Alishan is the last stop and where we got off.  A cultural show of dancing greeted us at the station which was nice, and then a Taiwanese person took us to their homestay.  Unfortunately we could not communicate at all, both us knowing way to little of the other person’s language, however that didnt stop us trying and we ended up talking at each other for a while - that would have been interesting to subtitle!  The town is pretty small, high up so a nice crisp air, and mountains all around.  We drank beer and watched the awesome sunset, ate hotpot and enjoyed the atmosphere and scenery.

At 4am we woke up, to be taken to the mountain to see the sunrise.  We ended up being really near where we were the weekend before for Jade.  We got offloaded at the side of the road, and given a dark glass to look through.  The sunset was nice, you could literally see the ball of sun appearing millimetre by millimetre over the mountain.  Although the lack of clouds didn’t make it very colourful, it was still nice.  On the drive home we stopped at a big tree, and also to see a group of monkeys bouncing in the trees, on the road, and eventually on the cars!

Back in Alishan we had a nap to recover, ate some brekkie then headed back down the mountain, this time in a car rather than a train, the scenery gradually changing back into tropical, and the air getting warmer and warmer.

At the end of May we were graced with two consecutive days off - thursday and friday, which was very pleasant indeed :-)  Me Simon and two friends got on our scooters and drove in the gorgeous sun with a breeze blowing through our helmets for a couple of hours towards a place called Guanziling.  We found an AWESOME camping spot - down this tiny lane that makes you seem like you’re in a jungle we drove until we saw a tiny green ladder and a rope, and after hauling ourselves up a few metres (obviously laden with the essentials - tent, sleeping bag, cooler filled with beer….) we camped under a climbers overhang. 

Guanziling is famous for its ‘firewater’.  An unusually large amount of natural gas is omitted from the centre of the earth, and if ignited, can keep burning itself.  It is surrounded by a pool of water.  It looks kind of cool, you can see the bubbles come up out of the water, and the the rock in the fire, and at night it was very pretty, however the recreation of it shown in the village using a gas bottle under the water and a lighter makes exactly the same effect….

On the friday we revisited Dave’s waterfall, this time taking swimming stuff with us.  Soooooooo much fun - we swam through the first pool and climbed up the mini waterfall, entering a previously unseen world by us - it was stunning.  The main waterfall was huge, and fell into another absoultely beautiful pool.  Swimming in that pool was immense - the strength of the waterfall caused a wonderful wind, meaning we could finally escape the eternal humidity of Taiwan.  Using a floating umbrella as a bar was also an excellent idea! After many attempts at acrobatics into the water, we drove back after an awesome two days not working.

A few weekends ago we climbed Jade Mountain, aka Mount Yushan, the highest mountain in North-east Asia.  The peak stands at 3952m high.

The mountain is permitted, and the majority of people climb up to a lodge which sits at 3402 on one day, sleep, then ascend the rest of the mountain early morning to catch sunrise.  They then leisurely descend.  Unfortunately the permits worked against the foreigners being allowed to do this on a weekend, and not through lack of trying, however we were left with only one option.  Go up and down in one day.

We camped in the car park outside the main entrance to the area.  Then at the joyful time of 3am we were woken by our alarms.  Packing up the tent in the dark, we set off with food, water and waterproofs up the 45 minute walk to the start of the trailhead.  At about 4.45 we reached the start of the actual trailhead and started the long walk up.

The sunlight quickly lit up the path, although the sun was behind the looming mountain in front of us, so we didn’t get to see the renowned beautiful rise. However, there was a sea of mountains below us, offering a stunning sight in itself.  The path climbed slowly higher and higher, and there was never any possibility of getting lost - the path was clearly carved.  We got to the lodge, had a quick rest stop, then continued on to the summit.

The last part of the trail was definitely the hardest - the path became very steep and although the clouds came rolling in, you could still tell how high you were by how stark the surroundings were.  We had left the lush forests behind and now all there was were rocks and broken shale.  The occasional flower however looked stunning as a beautiful contrast.  At one point in the trail, we had to walk through a cage which had been built to stop the rocks falling on the heads of the hikers.  That was interesting to look above and see what had been blocked from impact! The peak was finally reached, and we were rewarded by an excellent view of white clouds all around us.  The time was just just before 10am.

The descent we did slowly, watching our step and not wanting to fall down the steep mountain slopes.  We made our way back into the land of shrubbery, and then progressed to being surrounded by trees again.  Many people passed us on the way and it’s always nice to be greeted with “hello nice to meet you” in their best english accents. 

At just before 2pm, we reached the start of the trailhead again, a total of under 8 hours in total.  We were greeted by rain, and ambled back getting wet to where we had camped.  Unfortunately, none of us had more than a fractional amount of petrol in our scooters so we half rode, half coasted down the steep mountain roads in the pouring rain.  To add to the drama, thunder and lightening could be heard and seen, and the occasional rock fell warningly into our paths.  We left the mountain as quickly and as safely as we could, with only one person’s scooter succombing to the lack of fuel.  With a mixture of walking, leg pushing each other and a petrol run, we finally all made it to the petrol station, and then a further 2 hour drive home. 

Success!