Dajian Mountain and Xiufeng Falls- 大尖山跟秀峰瀑布

I woke up today thinking the weather forecast was going to be a lie, as it's proven to be in the last couple of weeks, but the slightly brighter light behind my curtains tempted me out of bed better than any alarm could've.  I threw open the curtains and there it was...the sun.  THANK YOU FOR DECIDING TO JOIN US AGAIN MR. SUN.  Fuck, I wish it had been rainy and shitty during out first week of training.  At least then I would've been prepared for the interminable grey that's hung over everything until now.

I put on my workout clothes, strapped my highly fashionable fanny pack above my tight, firm, spandex-covered ass, and put on some Marvin Gaye- I mean I left my apartment with water, $100 NT, and my camera, ready to finally try the hiking around Xizhi.  With the sun out, nothing could really shake my good mood, even the poor map to the hiking area:

It's a lot worse than it looks.

After getting completely turned around I asked a woman directions and confirmed what I had felt in my gut- I'd been going in the right direction all along.  Without any real indication of scale on any of the maps I saw, and a distinct unwillingness to recalculate km into miles, I relied instead on asking everyone I saw how close the falls were.  Everyone knows at least one person who, in foreign territory, is convinced they're lost and turns around when they're actually going the right direction.  I'm that person.  I always have to convince myself to trust my gut and just keep going.  Except part of the time my gut's wrong and I'm just going the wrong direction.  Taiwan's great for that though; people don't mind when you ask them directions, and a lot of the time they'll just let you know without any prompting at all.

It was all uphill along the road, which makes sense if you know the geography of Xizhi: a city literally nestled amidst mountains.  Being on the outskirts of Taipei means I'm not surrounded by a labyrinth of buildings churning out heat from a myriad AC units, but even then it gets hot and humid in Xizhi, so I appreciated the shade.  Also, you don't turn down fresh air in Taiwan, even if you live in the suburbs.  The suburbs of Taipei don't compare to Bellevue, not that the suburbs anywhere do.  With respect, most cities can't compare with Bellevue in quality of life (but they probably kick the shit out of it in terms of quality of nightlife).

I followed the one young person I saw all day, who happened to be a girl, and was hoping to maybe start a conversation with her, but even with me stopping and taking pictures I still outpaced her.  That's ok, I don't go hiking to run into people.

I live down there.  Somewhere.

You know it's a nice day when you can take pictures of the horizon and have it show up.

The trail proper started at Xiufeng Temple.  Actually there were a bunch of little entrances since the whole area is one big hiking trail.  I got a nice panoramic view of Xizhi above the road before I plunged into the forest.

I could circle where I live, but it's hidden behind a bunch of tall buildings.

Xiufeng Temple.  Not to take anything away from them, but temples look very similar in Taiwan, and they dot the landscape.  It's not like in China where you have these temples with a thousand-year history that barely survived the Cultural Revolution.  As a result, temple culture is still very much alive today in Taiwan, and perhaps as a result, far less cherished by the average visitor (well, if they stay for more than a couple weeks).

All hiking in Taiwan I've done leads up.  By virtue of this, all hikers here will climb plenty of stairs.  Trails seem well paved, and though some use a rock that gets frustratingly slick when wet, your feet will be gracing stone rather than dirt more often than not. 

Hope you like climbing stairs...

...you'll be doing a lot of it here. 

After a while I ran into an older gentleman on his way back down.  He told me that the falls weren't far away, just a half-hour stretch or so down, but it was slippery as hell.  And as we chatted he accompanied me back up.  You could tell that this was a guy really into hiking.  He knew about all the surrounding mountains and trails in the area (and there are a lot of them), and recommended I join one of the local hiking clubs.  They apparently take day-trips sometimes out to Yilan province...if those fall on the weekend, man sign me up.  Yilan is beautiful, even when the weather sucks.

The guy asked me all the usual questions about my personal life, where I was from, what I was doing, why I decided to come here.  When I told him about my experience in China, he wanted to know what I thought was the biggest difference between China and Taiwan.  I've been saying that the people are friendlier in Taiwan, but I'm not so sure that's the case.  I met plenty of warm, hospitable people in China, and you know in some cases my students were way better behaved over there too.  Maybe I didn't want to say it at the time, because they're so mundane, but the big differences are the cost of living and the temples.  You could argue that Taiwan has more foreign amenities to offer, but it's been five years since I've last been to China...maybe I don't know it that well anymore.  I remember coming back from China and not even recognizing Bellevue...there were nine or so cranes up in downtown, and the old Bellevue tunnel was gone.  Is that going to happen again when I come back home?

As we walked up the stairs, our speech interrupted by progressively heavier breathing, the man proudly commented how all of these trails are free and open to the public.  In China, you'd have to pay to use them.  He's right, you had to pay to get into every little goddamn tourist site, but maybe he didn't know why.  If you charge people admission, you can keep a running staff employed.  What does this staff do?  Stand around at the gate and rip tickets...exactly, not much.  But they're employed.  It's probably a vestige of communist China.  I don't know who keeps all the trails free of debris in Taiwan.  Maybe people just don't litter, or maybe its a corps of volunteers.  Or maybe it is people who do get paid. I don't really care, all I know is Taiwan does hiking right.

 We made it up to the pavilion at the top of Mt. Dajian and stood overlooking the majestic vista sprawled out before us. 

Won't get a view like this for a while.

Man, realizing I should've taken a picture of this guy.  I'm always so single-minded about the land around me, I forget that people like to see the interactions in a blog, otherwise it's like you're the last person traveling in a post-apocalyptic Earth...everything deserted.  He pointed out to a rock below us on the outlook- sometimes there's a huge snake warming itself there.  Non-poisonous, he quickly added.

Pointing to the NE, I asked him what the narrow peak in the distance was.  He told me that was Jilong in that direction.  Uncomprehending, I told him, "yeah, but what's the mountain past it?"  Man, I must've sounded dumb.

"That's the sea.  That's not a mountain, it's an island."

I realized that what I had thought was mist surrounding the peak was the ocean.  Wouldn't have made sense for it to be mist anyway at that elevation.  My mind was simply unable to comprehend that I could literally see all the way to the NE coast and beyond.  The ocean seemed to merge into the sky, creating the illusion that the island dissolved into blue.

I enjoyed the view and then the bid the man goodbye, thanking him for his advice and instruction.  He had to go down and catch lunch anyway.  I made my way down towards the waterfall heeding his advice about the slippery path. 

The culprits.

Good thing there was that rope, would've eaten shit a few times without it.

It's always a pain in the ass when you have to exert yourself more to go more slowly, especially for someone like me who wants to go at his own pace all the time.  Even then I was slipping around...don't know why the path was so damp since I was still a ways out from the falls- guess this kind of stone soaks up water like a sponge and was holding a week's worth of rain.

Path broke out into the road and I had to trust the signs and keep traveling down, as in down the way I came.  More bullshit slippery rocks, but I could tell I was getting closer.  The path wove around a cliff, and I could hear the sound of rushing water.

YEAH!!! LOOK AT ALL THAT WATER!!!!

Haha, yeah that would've pissed me off.  No, this was before the cliff side.  Here are the pictures leading up to the actual waterfall.

Really had to squeeze myself through the hole at the bottom.

 All along the bottom you could see this beautiful moss clinging to the cliff side, evoking the colors of a Japanese maple during fall.  Unfortunately, in these pictures you can't really see the colors as distinctively; everything kind of washes together. 

It'd be great sipping tea at that table with a friend, playing a game of Magic away from everything.

I took my time along this stretch.  The waterfall would still be there at the end anyway, and since I'd gotten up early I had all the time in the world before my classes started.  Who knew when the next brilliantly sunny day would be (especially in Xizhi).  I admired the layers of rock, and the lush green cliffs out beyond the fence.

Do trails lead over this way too?  I'll have to find out.

Perhaps I was taking my time in anticipation of a let-down.  Still, the waterfall beckoned and when I rounded the corner I prepared myself. 

Yeah, I was floored.  Not at all what I was expecting.  The twin streams, the way that beautiful garnet-hued rock enfolded the falls, the rush of water cascading down from the clear pool at the bottom.  I mean, this shit looked like something from a high-budget kung-fu movie.  I could totally see a monk (female and hot and unfortunately bald) on a pilgrimage, coming here to meditate and being ambushed by some adversary.  Again, the picture doesn't do justice to the color of the rock, and the leaves, gold and red and green, that lay scattered about. 

The strata of rock created a natural stairway to the pool.

 I lingered here for a bit, wondering if this was it, if I had just come here to look at the falls and then leave.  So I took off my shoes and went exploring in the pool and down the river.  Apparently people here like to hike in the actual bed of a river, called tracing, which I totally could've done with more time.  I wouldn't have minded stripping down and taking a nice bath in the pool, but I didn't bring a towel.  Next time.  I wanted to stay here until the sun sank below the horizon, but real life has a way of stepping in...thus is it ever the case with hiking.

One last look, one last picture, and then it was back up.

The moss-covered rocks weren't so bad going up.  Walking back towards the pavilion, I took the other way in the fork, wondering if there was a higher part of the peak...nope, just trails leading away to other mountains.  So that pavilion really was at the highest part of Dajian...I decided to take a picture of it, and of the trail leading back towards it.

You can't really see it all that well, but there was a Taiwanese flag flapping above.

Coming back down I witnessed a blur of something brown and fuzzy and immediately stopped.  My first wild mammal since coming to Taiwan...what was it?  Something exotic like the native monkey, or maybe some kind of weird opossum?  Nope, a squirrel.  Don't have a picture of that, but I do have one of these awesome long-tailed birds I saw:

Watcha doin'?  I see you.

As I got closer and closer to the city, I could feel a mantle of drudgery settle itself heavily upon my shoulders.  But I could also feel comfort in the return to civilization, and the urge to shower and rid myself of the stink of hiking.  Always, always there's a give and take between the two.

Note: as I finish this, the past few days have been warm and rain-free, but hazy and muggy as hell.  Really glad I got out and did this.  I'll have to keep vigilant for similar days, and maybe go farther afield.