This is a rather long post. So sorry for the incessant chatter.
After my morning trip to Beitou, I went back to the hotel where the tour guide for my Jiufen trip fetched me. I found the travel agency via the Taiwan Tour Bus in the Taiwan tourism website and booked and paid the cost online. According to the tour package, the guide would take us to the Northeast Coast, Jiufen and back to Taipei. I paid NTD 1,100 for the tour.
My tour group consists of an Indian family of three (mom, dad and adult son), a gentleman from the US, plus our driver and tour guide. We went aboard a spacious van and I had the seat at the back all by myself. The airconditioning was cranked up high, thank God for that, to alleviate the heat from the summer sun.
Our tour guide was lively enough and told us quite a number of interesting tidbits about the places we were to visit and about Taiwan in general. I forgot about most of it, though. I have very short attention and memory span. Lol.
Anyway, we finally reached a coastal area, called the Northeast Coast and we passed by some huge rock formations, apparently, it's called the Nanya Rock Formations, and the old mining site adjacent to the Yin Yang Sea, or the two-colored bay. The area is so pretty: lush, green mountains on one side and the ocean on the other side.
We had a short stop at some viewing deck some place near where the mountain with a profile of a human could be found. According to the tour guide, we should use our imagination to see the “profile.” He then asked us one by one whether we could see the nose and all, and he had drawn on paper what we were supposed to be seeing. It was funny. But for all I know, I might have misunderstood him, especially that I wasn't paying attention anyway. That would have been funnier. There were some huge tetrapods, those four-spiked concrete armor found on breakwaters laying steadily on the coast. I call it the monster jackstones. And I was so excited to see those. I have been seeing them on some Japanese tv series and I find them quite lovely and fascinating. Makes me want to stand beside the tetrapods to see how gigantic they are. Oh, I also saw lots of tetrapods in Danshui, near the Lover's Bridge. If it wasn't so windy when I went in Danshui, I would have loved to stroll along the breakwater and act as if I'm the heroine of some asian drama series. Haha!
We had a short stop at some viewing deck some place near where the mountain with a profile of a human could be found. According to the tour guide, we should use our imagination to see the “profile.” He then asked us one by one whether we could see the nose and all, and he had drawn on paper what we were supposed to be seeing. It was funny. But for all I know, I might have misunderstood him, especially that I wasn't paying attention anyway. That would have been funnier. There were some huge tetrapods, those four-spiked concrete armor found on breakwaters laying steadily on the coast. I call it the monster jackstones. And I was so excited to see those. I have been seeing them on some Japanese tv series and I find them quite lovely and fascinating. Makes me want to stand beside the tetrapods to see how gigantic they are. Oh, I also saw lots of tetrapods in Danshui, near the Lover's Bridge. If it wasn't so windy when I went in Danshui, I would have loved to stroll along the breakwater and act as if I'm the heroine of some asian drama series. Haha!
There were a lot of people fishing on the rock formations and some were picnicking, swimming, and even scuba diving. It's like a go-to place for a weekend getaway with family and friends. And why not? The beauty of the northeast coast is just so visually stunning: clear blue skies, earthen color of the rocks, the vibrant green of the mountains...
After that, the guide brought us to see some pretty rock formations. He even led us atop one of the rocks but I didn’t climb on it; it was slippery and I was wearing slippery-soled sandals. And, I’m kinda scared of heights. I have no problem going up, but I have a lot of problems going down. So, I was like a kid who couldn’t play ball during P.E. class. :-(
Since the tour guide was being so generous, he allowed us to stop at the Ying Yang Sea to take some pictures. Apparently, the ore color trailing from the edge of the coastal highway towards the sea comes from the old mining/smelting site on the adjacent hill. And some of those monster jackstones have been heavily saturated with the ore color as well. The hues of the tetrapods are a sight to behold. Really. And it translates well in pictures.
We wrapped up our Northeast Coast tour and we proceeded to ascend the narrow , winding road going to Juifen. Yay!
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