Cycle Mountain, Cycle Sea - Part VI

And, finally...

Got up at 600 am for a quick bike/hike up to the summit of a little peak with a view of Jade Mountain (YuShan). At 3952 meters, it is the tallest mountain in north east Asia. At 2854 meters, we were still way under it. Above is a bad pic of the sunrise over a cloud covered Jade Mountain.

It was somewhere around zero that morning, and frost covered the ground.

From here we biked down the mountain towards PuLi, passing Sun Moon Lake - what must be Taiwan's number one tourist destination among local tourists - in the early afternoon.

From PuLi we took a bus made our way up to LuShan, an incredibly busy hot springs area (a little too close to TaiChung I guess). If you ever go there, I suggest you cross the river and head upstream on the path that clings to the cliffs along the right side of the river. In the back you will find this great little aboriginal village and a few quiet homestays.

This is a picture of the homestay we stayed at. What a great place. You can see the pools down near the river. A perfect place for a vacation I think. Quiet gardens, and a great Philippino couple with fluent english doing the cooking and cleaning.

And a picture of the springs...

Things got a little hairy the next day. We managed to head about 10 km up the road before discovering that we were on the wrong road. The road was crazy steep, and we had decided to hitch a ride with a blue truck. They chuckled when we explained that we were going to HeHuanShan... and down the mountain we went. We started the climb again on the right road, but by this time it was already past noon. We got to Tsing Ching Farm after a draining climb to about 2300 meters at around 3:00. HeHuanShan still being another 1000 meters higher, we started hitching again. Unsurprisingly, no one was heading up the mountain on that particular late Sunday afternoon.

In the end, the best thing to do was to abandon the plan and bike back down to PuLi and hop a bus.

And so it ends.