I have Tuesdays off now! Woot! BFF Nareesa is off after 11am on Tuesdays so we have decided to make Tuesdays a regular sightseeing day. We decided we would travel to the Maokong area, which is a major tea growing district with a couple of hiking trails to explore and some temples to see. NOW, any faithful reader of this blog should be aware that almost everytime I go hiking I get seriously lost. Yesterday was no exception, kind reader. There were 2 trails to choose from: one led to a fancy looking temple and one was called the "tea pickers hiking trail". Since "tea pickers" makes me think of nose pickers we tried to find the temple. Twice. The first time we wound up in some sort of suburban condominium-filled area and the second time we thought we were on the right track and wound up in some hick village with the trail ending at a family crypt.
So we decided to go with the nose picker trail. I mean the tea picker trail. At this point we had already been walking for about an hour, but at least we knew there was a bus that would take us to the tea picker trail. So, we hopped on the bus and when we saw signs for the trail we got off and started our climb. I had read online that the big temple I wrote about earlier had 1200 steps leading to it. So, when our climb started out hiking up about a million damn steps we thought- GREAT- this is going to take us to the temple. After a bit of climbing we looked at the view and could clearly see the worlds biggest temple in the distance... on a different mountain. Still... we figured there had to be something to see on this trail so we went on.
After hiking those damn stairs for around an hour and passing by some family crypts, koi ponds, and enjoying some nice views of Taipei we looked up to see a clearing at the top of the stairs. And as our burning legs took us to the top we could see that the clearing led to a road and a BUS drove by! The same bus we'd gotten off at the bottom of all of those stairs!!!! There were tears. Still, after crossing the road we could see that the trail continued onward and according to the sign we were not too far from a temple. Not THE temple but a temple. After all that walking, we wanted a pay off of some sort, so we kept going. We came to another clearing at Maokong Station. This is where a gondola service used to run but it's been closed for a year now after a typhoon caused a lot of damage to the line. There was no temple in sight, so we continued up another trail straight ahead.
Within a few minutes we could tell that this trail was obviously a bit more... rustic than the last. It was also around this time that we were chased by three rabid dogs up a section of the trail. Nareesa could feel their breath on her legs. It was not good, but we continued. We were going to see the damn temple! Then the trail turned into a million moss-covered (AKA slippery as hell) stone stairs into the sky. Route markers on the path showed that we were almost to the top so we kept going. At this point it was around 4:40 and it gets dark here around 5:15 so my eye was on my watch.
And then it happened- we got to the top! Were we rewarded with a temple? No. Was there a beautiful view? Nooooooo. At the top there was 4 signs showing us which ways we could go to continue our hike. Yay! None of the other trails even had mossy stone steps to offer... they were just dirt and roots and who knew how long they were, so we decided we had to go back the way we came. It was a slick, slow descent let me tell you.
When we came to the area before where the mean dogs were we took an irrigation trail around a tea farm to avoid them and get back to the road! The picture above is where we made our classy exit.
The trail came out at the old gondola station that I mentioned earlier. And what did I notice around the corner from the station? A TEMPLE!!! The temple was right there the whole time and we didn't notice it. In fact, we hiked right past it up those mossy stone steps. Those dogs weren't trying to scare us, they were trying to warn us! And guess what? The temple sucked. There's a nicer temple next door to my apartment.
While we were waiting for a bus back to the MRT we saw a map of the area. Apparantly, we had hiked Mount Ergeshan. Cool. And also, we had missed out on this totally awesome tourist attraction:
A pothole!
Since it was a famous tea picking area and there were tea houses everywhere, we decided to reward ourselves with a cup of tea. Neither of us like tea in the least but it seemed like the thing to do. But, when we were handed the menu and we noticed that the cheapest tea was over $10 CAN plus a $60NT drunk charge we marched right out of there and went to our bus stop.
Tired and still amused and bewildered by our day on the MRT.
We treated ourselves to some well-earned supper at TGI Fridays. It was absolutely amazing food, especially after the workout we had. But the real treat happened when we got dessert... at the Hello Kitty Cafe! But that fantastickness deserves a post of its' own, so watch for that update coming soon!
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