Celsius - 273 - Pulling it closer to me : Taiwan

Under construction

TAIWAN ( 18 - 26 Apr 2017)

GENERAL SIGHT SEEING TOUR

IN a break of my tradition , this trip does not involved Mountain trekking nor night sky photography. Its a lets-go-see what they have.

Day 1 - Have a glimpse of the early dawn sky from plane. A neat dark blue color brightening but there are No way to take any picture as we were seated away from the window. Arriving early in the morning @ Tauyuan T1 5:30am most shops arent open yet. So we didn't manage to see any airport shops for local SIM cards. But we bought store value card for TWD100 and added TWD300 each at a convenient store. Took train to Taipei and the there is an underpass to the Hotel was very near to the huge Taipei Main Station.

In Taiwan the hotel check in time is 3pm and check out time is 11 am. So we left the luggage in the care of hotel and arranging ad-hoc tour from hotel. We settled on a 6 hrs tours to visit Yehliu Geo park (x4 hrs) to see the famous Queen's head and as well as the nearby YangMingShan Park (x2) hrs. TWD3000. A taxi driver turns up in time. Then hunting for something to eat.

The sea around Yehliu

Yehliu outcrop of mushroom shaped rocks

The iconic Queen's Head - wind eroded mushroom head. Not sure why i came to know about this when i was still a boy.

Waiting for the crowd to clear and shot this before the lady fully emerges.

Landscape there

Looks smaller and fragile than we had thought. In fact the figure is so popular that clone models of the Queen's head were erected not far from entrance to 'shorten' the queue for taking pictures. Ugly jump queue incidents had happened before from neighboring country tourists. It was a week day so not too many people there.

The chicken drumstick

Closer look at the conical shape 'mountain' topped with a central peak

General view of the protrusion into the sea

Monks marvel at the nature's creations. The painted red line is ' no cross' zone and there are park rangers keeping watch and blowing the whistle to warn tourist not to climb or touch the stones.

A thin crust of eroded pieces remain

The floral clock of Yangmingshan ( not served by bus 108 but 206). We visited by taxi on a raining day but on the last day we revisited this place with better weather.

Take bus 108 to go round Yangmingshan attraction sites. We took Red5 from Taipei Main Station to Yangmingshan visitor centre. THe queue that morning was super long as the same bus serves several school and colleges and students have priority.

Sea view Yehliu

Season is over for cherry blossom but some still there

Heavy rain soon followed and the SUV driver waiting for us to finish our lunch. WIld green vegetable, smelly bean and rice

We hit this as our first spot. Yes must go see hissing steam and hot bubbling water.

General view of the volcanic activities

Sulphur at the blow hole. P900 zoomed in for the sulfur pool details see below.

Yellow sulfur condensate

Like a face in the ground spilling toxic gases

Milk Ponds due to volcanic composition and see the house top right for scale comparison.

Pill Box for shells? Zoomed in view instead of doing the actual hike there. Grass pastures for cow.

THe long long walk if you wanted in Quintiankang . No cows were spotted.

A bit soft as it was drizzling and my filter lens fog up from inside

Another one. Yet to ID.

Saw this couple so take a peep shot of the interesting expression.

Jianshi water falls - the 2nd last station . We missed the first round because they use the Chingshan as station name. So we go one more round and dropped off two stations. Bus fare charges on boarding the bus. When you board the bus there is a plague on top lit up either 'IN' or 'OUT' .