First of all, Happy New Year! (Sorry for being two weeks late but unfortunately I had a few things to sort out with my Visa).A few weeks ago, the local department store held a travel promotion on various attractions around Taiwan. A particular one that caught the Doctor's keen sense of a bargain was a hotel in HengChun (恆春). Yesterday we caught the late afternoon bus from Kaohsiung and travelled down to HengChun. When we arrived at the hotel, it seemed to be a very large complex, but it appeared that the Doctor and I were one of a handful of guests. After spending one night there, I can guess why the hotel wasn't that busy.
On the Friday night that we arrived, we hired a scooter and drove to one of the local attractions. This attraction is called ChuHuo and means that fire is escaping from the ground. The fires that you can see in the photos are constantly burning from natural gas that escapes through small airways in the ground. When the Doctor and I first arrived, there were some Taiwanese tourists who had put some Sweet Potato in foil and were cooking it (despite a sign saying not to engage in this sort of activity). This very reminded me of camping in my much younger days around a camp fire and toasting damper.
The following morning, that being Saturday, the Doctor and I started our round trip. One of the first stops was brick wall that formed the Northern Gate of an historic wall that once surrounded the town. It was of interest to me on this day because my Chinese Language teacher had mentioned something similar in class the preceding day. I'll put a link at the bottom of this posting to all of my photos I took from this trip. But for now, here is a photo showing the construction of the wall and the reason for it.
The next stop that we made was a waterfall that had seven pots of water. To get anyway near the waterfall, we had to literally walk up the water bank. Then to see some of the water pots, we had a very steep climb. We managed to up to pot number 4 and this is shown in the photo to the left. After deciding that we had climbed enough of a 45 degree slope, we heading back down only to find out that the trip down was more dangerous then climbing up.On our trip, we encountered a couple from Singapore and they told us that the climb was too steep for them and I don't think they even attempted it. That was a shame because even to see one of two was worth the effort to climb a little bit.
Another stop that we made was on a very windy beach that had golden sands. In Australia, golden sands are on almost all beaches, however in New Zealand and Taiwan it is a novelty because of its rarity. This particular beach called FongChuiShu was one that I think my Chinese language teacher visited a month before, I think she was rugged up like she was visiting the North Pole - but today I was lucky and the weather was quite warm.
The next stop was Eluanbi Park. This is the most southern point on the Taiwan mainland. The park had numerous attractions such as a local shown in the picture to the right. We also came across a seven legged spider that was bigger than any spider I had seen before. I'll let you look at the photos to see the other attractions that included Kissing Rocks, a Lighthouse that has an interesting history and a few rock formations.
After surviving the park, we headed to KenDing and had our lunch. We found a Mexican themed restaurant and had pizza.
The next adventure was boat trip that had glass sides. I think the boat was called Small Dolphin. After getting use to the glass sides, we made our way out into the open ocean. Just off the coast was a reef and it was quite amazing to see the rugged sea bed that was usually reserved for the fishes. Although we didn't see too many strange and usual sea creatures, we did see a turtle that apparently was rare.The final place that visited before heading back to Kaohsiung was to visit GuanShan mountain. This is a favourite place for couples to watch the sunset over Taiwan Strait. We arrived a little early so we just walked around. Funny enough there were already many people prepared to wait out the next hour or so just to watch the sunset.
To see the full set of photos, please click on this link - (KenDing Photos).
We came back to Kaohsiung Saturday night because I had homework and the Doctor has some of his work to do. But I think we saw quite a lot in one day and will definitely plan another trip to the area.
Till next time, haveagoodone.
