Last night Yini went to the hotel’s hot spring to relax, but since we had a private one in our room I stayed in writing last night’s blog entry instead. This morning we went down to the river in Wulai and found some natural hot springs. Since Yini did plenty of soaking the night before, she opted out but I went in to enjoy the waters. It is a really special experience, in my book it’s better than the resorts. You sit there in a small pool built from river rocks, in a mix of hot and cold water, one moment a surge of hot water makes it almost unbearable and the next moment a wave of cold from the river washes in and cools you down again. All the while you sea the sparkling river flow past, amidst grey cliffs topped with green.

  • The little pool of rocks in the river
  • Left foot is cold right foot is hot

When I had finished soaking we hit the road and head out towards a big water reservoir, some 20 kilometers to the east. It was a great ride along the curvy road number nine, among lush green mountains.  Once we got to the lake, the view became even more spectacular.

First view of the lake.
  • Getting down towards the water
  • Some tea gardens by the lake
  • Lake view panorama

From there we continued on the winding roads among beautiful surroundings towards the Shifen (ten points) waterfall.

Random stop along the road

When we got closer to the waterfall there was a bit of a traffic jam which did not bode well. In fact, the traffic jam lasted all the way up to the waterfall park entrance. Needless to say there were a lot of people there which sort of spoiled the impression but the waterfall is very beautiful none the less.

  • First glimpse of the falls.
  • The queue down to the viewing platform
  • Too many people
  • Better view of the falls
  • Cute Renegade wife

View from the top of the fall.

When we had battled the hoards of tourists around the falls for a while and finally got back out it was already past four and we had some distance to go to our hotel, so we decided not to stop along the way. This is at the outskirts of Taipei so traffic is pretty bad and the roads are rather tricky but thanks to Yini’s brilliant navigation, we made it through to the main road without a single U-turn. 

Once past the messy traffic we followed country road number two northwards, out to the coast, past the area with the UFO houses in Wanli all the way to Jinshan and our hotel. After dinner in in the Jinshan old streets we went down to the harbour to look at the moon which happens to be big, bright and romantic tonight.

After a pleasant time watching the moon we went back to our hotel which, like all good hotels in Taiwan, has a hot spring area. As I’m writing this, we’ve just come back from a soak. Life is good.

As always, I like to end my posts with a night view shot, enjoy: