Yangmingshan

So on Sunday I finally got out of Taichung! My friend Mike (GreenMike, to differentiate him from my Mike) and I went to Yangmingshan National Park for the day. Yangmingshan is known for its hiking, hot springs, bird-watching, and poisonous snakes. There's a bajillion nature-y things to do there. Our main goal was to go for a hike.

We took the bus from Taichung to Taipei and were actually dropped off IN THE BUS STATION. The elusive bus station I'm always searching for but have never actually found!! It's beautiful. It's shiny. And new. And fancy. And clean. And shiny. I love it.

We both approve of the shiny.

Then we took another bus to Yangmingshan, north of the city. We were dropped off at this bus terminus and were a little confused. I assumed it'd be more like Sun Moon Lake--open, busy, and touristy. But we were, like, in the jungle in the mountains. There was a building with some vending machines and a bunch of trails and some fruit sellers. That was it. I was hoping for a visitor center with a nice map, so we could decide which trails to take. We saw a sign with an arrow for the visitor center, so we walked in that direction. It turned out to be a mini-hike, a bit less than a kilometer. When we finally reached the visitor center, we were sweating balls. We bought some water and ate some beef noodles for lunch.
We looked over our trail options, and decided that first we wanted to take the free shuttle bus around the entire place, to get a feel for it and see everything. So we hiked back towards the bus terminus and got on the shuttle bus. Woo! It was jolty. This is what it felt like:
And all the mist and fog slowed no one down (after I took this picture, the fog completely covered the roads).
The bus let some people off at this one place that looked really nice so we decided to get off too. There, we found a short trail through some sort of nature park. It was gorgeous! There were lots of families with their adorable children running around and lots of mountain mist. It was very beautiful.




Then we got back on the shuttle bus, because it was fast approaching 5:30--when the shuttle bus would stop running. By the time we got back to the bus terminus, it was going to get dark soon, so we decided to head back to Taipei. As much as I wanted to hike through a jungle known for its poisonous snakes without a flashlight, we decided against it. So, although we didn't do any hardcore hiking, we hiked a little bit and saw a lot of the park on the bus. I'd like to go back and do a full-fledged hike sometime.

I'm not sure where I'll go this weekend. Maybe Wulai...we will see!