From the lake to the mountains … again

It was a foggy start at Sun Moon lake this morning as I woke up early, hoping for an opportunity to get the drone in the air for a few photos. The early signs weren’t good as a heavy fog lay low right across the lake.

As the sun came up the fog lifted and I was able to get in the air and take a few photos.

I was back in the hotel room in time for Debbie’s alarm to go off and to get ready for the usual breakfast buffet.

Our first stop for the the day was the Wen Wu Temple, which is unique because it commemorates 3 different religions – Buddhist, Taoists and Confucianism. It started life in it’s current place in 1938 after the Japanese had built a new dam which raised the level of the lake in order to generate hydro-electricity. This meant some existing temples were submerged and so it was decided to combine them. In 1969 the temple was rebuilt in it’s current Chinese palace style.

Next stop was the Xuanzang Temple which also overlooks Sun Moon Lake. I commemorates the 18 year journey of Xuanzang, the first buddhist monk, who travelled widely across China and India in the seventh century. Three of his teeth are stored at the temple, however we did not need to view them. The Temple is built in a more Japanese style.

 

From there we drove back into the mountains to head to Alishan. This road was badly damaged in an earthquake in May this year and is closed at certain times of the day to enable continued remediation work, so our schedule was dictate by making sure we could get through. While it wasn’t as cloudy as yesterday, the weather closed in as we ascended beyond the 2000 metre mark.

I have to say, not being able to see the big drop off into the valleys below is not necessarily a bad thing. We arrived at Alishan train station at about 2 pm where we had to leave the car, because there is an effort to limit the amount of pollution in the forest. Alishan is famous for its ancient Cypress forests, with some trees being estimated at 2000 years old. We took an afternoon walk in the forest which was quite an interesting experience as the cloud swirls around.

This area is also one of the few places that the Wasabi plant will grow and Taiwan actually exports large quantities into Japan.

We opted for an early dinner at the hotel, which incidentally was another of Kiang Kai-shek’s villas. The meal was a fairly average buffet, so the advice would be to head down to one of the local restaurants. We have an early start tomorrow, hoping to catch the sunrise, if the cloud parts for long enough.

I’ll leave you tonight with one last piece of safety advice.

Until tomorrow!