Over the Moon: Mid Autumn Festival Yilan Style

Suao port and beach from Suhua Highway

The one thing to expect on a 3 day weekend in Taiwan are the crowds. That and train tickets will be sold out 2 weeks before they sell at the station (you can buy online with a Taiwanese ID #). So when we had moments of crowd-less nature, I definitely was over the moon with gratitude. It was also the first time in 6 years I was free in my own car to explore Yilan.

The empty Neibi beach, Suao.

Saturday Day 1 of our Moon festival weekend, went as planned. On our way to Nanao, we stopped for coffee at Neibi beach. It was totally desolate. We had the rooftop cafe to ourselves as well as the view of the Pacific. Where were all the crowds? In Kenting no doubt. After coffee and a shared shaved matcha iced tea with red beans we were back in the car.

The woman at the cafe told me in Mandarin that the local Matsu temple was moving the goddess idol to visit a god in Yilan and she explained times and locations. I was pretty giddy to have my comprehension of her explanation proved when we ran into the pilgrims. They had the coolest shirts, a sea of red devotees.

My friend climbing for a jump, Auhua Waterfalls.

After that it was back in the car to Nan'ao and there we found the crowds, bumper to bumper on the notoriously dangerous and most beautiful highway, the Suh-ua Highway. Its danger is not due to the narrow one lane switchbacks that plummet to the Pacific, but because fellow drivers are impatient and pass the corners on blind spots.

Outside a little aboriginal village called Aohua (the 161 km marker) there is the most magnificent waterfall. Three aboriginal teens on one scooter took us there. There were other cars in the lot and we hiked up a 5 minute walk, scrambled some rocks and there it was. There were a few families, but the pool was so enormous, the water dwarfed us so there was room enough for all. My companion bravely scrambled a bit up the wet and slippery rocks to plummet into the sparkling cold abyss.

 

We went home as planned, beat, ready for Sunday and finding a camping spot. Our day 2 definitely did not go as planned, except for the coffee at the revolving cafe on Highway 7. We found a camping spot next to Champing Lake, which was fairly close, like 15 minutes outside of Loudong. There was a lake circumstanced by wooden walkways and the camp spots had wooden platforms and BBQ grills. There was even a go-cart track. Surpisingly, there were few campers, maybe 2 or 3 tents that I could see. And still, greedy for solitude, we kept going further up the 7, farther away from big cities, only to find more crowds and rain. Camping did not happen. 

We did go up the eastern part of the North Cross highway to check out the Mingchi Forest Recreation area. It was disappointing. The lake was over-developed and charged an entrance fee. The Forest area itself has a massive resort  (明池國家森林遊樂區) on it with cabins and a restaurant that was of course crowded. The North Cross Highway which is high in altitude has some nice views and dark, misty, dank forests. There were moments we drove in clouds and we definitely got caught in the rain on the way back. We took a walk behind the cabins and found a few trails, but there were no camping spots there. Who knows we might com back on a non-holiday weekend and stay in one of the cabins.

Day 3 of our Moon Festival weekend, on Monday, we took our time heading out to one more nearby waterfall. Around the corner from Xingliao Waterfall is the abandoned Jiuliou Waterfall, about a 20 minute drive from my home. The trail was not very well maintained, but there wasn't another person there. We had the whole overgrown trail and small waterfall to ourselves. The overgrown parking lot is a perfect camping spot, no bathrooms, wooden platforms or vending machines. The path from the parking lot to the trail has a pomelo orchard on it. Pomelo is the fruit of the mid-Autumn festival.

We will hopefully return to those falls to camp next weekend.

Turtle Island from the Suao/Suhua Highway overlook

My Family's First Visit to Formosa: Su-hua Highway and Taroko National Park

Su'hua Highway Blues

No trip to Taiwan is done without a trip to Taroko National Park (太魯閣國家公園) -- its the Grand Canyon of Taiwan. As we were admiring the park, it reminded all of us of Colorado, just different trees (and whole lot more humidity), those rocky canyons seemed all too familiar. They were all homesick.

Having been to Taroko before, I was more excited about the drive there from Yilan down the Su-hua Highway (蘇花公路). It was definitely beautiful, majestic turquoise waters, but I still think the coastal highways around Taitung  (especially around Taimali) are just as beautiful. My folks were more concerned about making the drive alive, they were unprepared for the reckless drivers overtaking each other along cliffs and the sharp mountain switchbacks.

More Su'hua Highway Blues

We stopped for lunch at some hole in the wall, mom and pop roadside diner, a pizza place with free WiFi, that was totally empty. My mom wanted fried rice, having warned her fried rice is pretty much the same everywhere, she still wanted to know what was in it....so she tried it, ate it all, but I think none of them were too impressed. Z and I were stoked to get some semblance of a pizza, corn and all. Food was one area of anxiety for my mom, everything had gluten and too much sugar-and that's all too true, but I it fell on deaf ears to just let it go for just a few weeks. I didn't even tell her, out of pity, that everything was probably loaded with MSG.

We arrived at Taroko too late to really explore it, just a day trip with the usual walks, no real hikes. They weren't up for anything athletic anyways, so at their pace we admired the natural beauty. Things got pretty exciting when a big tourist bus hogged the small mountain road and forced my Dad to reverse into the taxi behind us. There was no harm done, no car damage, so I told him to not worry about it and the taxi driver seemed pretty nonchalant, but it did make a great memory, "Remember the time that Chinese tourist bus..."

Mom and Dad crossing the bridge

My daughter was in heaven pretending to be our tour guide and spending time with her favorite Uncle.I had fun with him on some of the suspensions bridges, making it jump, us giggling like children.

Ed, me and Z at the Eternal Spring Shrine