Wu Liao Adventure

By Perrin

        We slammed the taxi door shut and started up the rickety stairs that were the beginning of the Wu Liao trail in San Chung, a town outside of Taipei. We all had our backpacks on, and were ready for an exciting 3-4 hour hike. Taiwan’s tall, steep mountains make the hiking there pretty exhilarating. Since Taiwan is located where two tectonic plates meet, the mountains are steep and tall. The tallest mountains are 13,000 ft., and many are taller than Mt. Washington! This particular hike has been said to be one of the best hikes in the Taipei area.  

                           

It started like almost every other hike in Taipei. With stairs. But luckily they didn’t last for long. The first half an hour seemed like we were hiking vertically. There were ropes and hand holds, and you basically crawled up the trail. The path was mostly rocks and tree roots and in places the roots were strangling the rocks.  

                                  

At one point there was a HUGE boulder that had an overhang and a rope was hanging down. It was exciting to climb but my mom seemed to be having heart palpitations since she was finding it difficult to watch us go up it because she was worried we would fall. After we had gone for about 2+ hours and finally reached the ridge, there was another point in the trail where there was a sloping rock face, and if you fell down, you would tumble... to... your... DEATH!!!!! I was so scared. There were little foot holes that you could walk or crawl up and a rope to hold on to. 

                   

Once at the top it was just as thrilling. The path was 1-2 ft. wide with one, 2-foot high railing and dropped off on both sides. Though it was scary, the views and height were fantastic!

                              

We also saw a little black bird with orange on it’s wings, head and chest. There are lots of amazing natural treasures in Taiwan and this bird was one of them. I wished I could just keep that color in my pocket so I could use it for paint. The orange color was incredible! If I had wings like that bird, I would just jump off the mountain and soar away into the clouds. As we were walking along the trail, we also noticed rocks with bright orange and chartreuse green moss on them. As well as that, we saw some ferns that were as tall as me or taller! They were definitely the biggest ferns I have ever seen. Another thing that blew my mind was a GINORMOUS tree. It looked like it came right from the pages of a fairy tale. It was ancient and magical.

              

               

We had lunch on a little look out that had a tiny cave and was a nice little nook. I was starving! We ate the dried fruit that we had gotten at Di Hua Jie, a bustling market street where you can  buy almost anything. It was delicious, especially after 2+ hours of hiking. After lunch we kept hiking and looking for a map to show us how far we had gone. We found one and it showed that we were about 1/3 of the way. We had barely gone anywhere! Two peaks later we came to another map. We then realized that the maps were not to scale so we had no idea how far we had come. We knew we still had a ways to go, but we were having a lot of fun so we weren’t worrying about how far we had gone or how far we still had to go.

At one map we decided to take the shortcut because we were tired. The beginning was a huge boulder that you had to climb down with a rope.

                               

That was pretty scary and I think my mom had another heart palpitation. After listening to Carly sing, “Heart palpitation, heart palpitation, mommy had a heart palpitation!” for the millionth time, we came to another map. It showed that we only had one peak to go! I was relieved because it had seemed like the mountain had gone on forever! We scrambled up the rocks and roots (there were TONS of roots!) until we reached the final peak! There was a beautiful view of the rolling valley of green and I could imagine why Chinese and Asians like dragons so much. They seem to fit right in with the landscape. Another family was there eating their Chinese New Year's lunch and they actually cooked noodles in a camp stove!! It had been 4 hours and we were really tired but we still had to go down!

 I was glad once we had started the descent because it meant that we were almost done, even though I like going up better because my knees don't hurt going up. The downhill started with a long rope ladder running down a cliff to a trail. The trail down was not very exciting except for huge bamboo growing along the side of the trail. I also found two little frogs that were near a bucket of water and were magnificent, with shiny, slick bodies and a deep green color. 

                        

                      

We ended our hike abruptly at a road and walked down it to the waiting taxi that my dad had called a bit before. My sister and I had fun popping the seed packets of a common wildflower by the side of the road while walking down to the taxi. 

The many seeds are in little green pods that look like football shaped pumpkins. When you squeeze the fatter ones gently, they pop and the seeds fly all over the place and the sac curls up like a centipede. By the time we had popped at least 50 seed bubbles, we had found the bigger road where the taxi was waiting. We got in and realized we were starved, so we stopped by a 7-Eleven (there are 7-Elevens on almost every corner of Taiwan) and bought some ice cream, sodas, and Doritos to tide us over. Ironically, junk food ended our 5 hour hike! It had been a fun and tiring day.