It had been a long time since we had had a real, honest-to-god road trip to the south of Taiwan. Why not take a three-day weekend to hit the back roads and explore some of the more off-the-beaten-track sights Taiwan has to offer?
So four of us who were able to take Friday off piled into the Toyota and hit the open highway.
After a relatively uneventful drive down the freeway, we exited to head for our first destination: Guanziling, in the mountains above Changhua. A century ago, Guanziling was developed as a mountain resort area by the hot-springs-loving Japanese. On the way up the winding, switchback mountain road we stopped by a temple just in time to see some monks doing their evening devotionals.
Perched high on a mountainside, the temple ordinarily offers commanding views of the countryside below. But today visibility was poor because of a dust storm blowing in from China.
Then we went further up the road to see a rather bizarre sight: something I'd heard of many years ago but never had the chance to see. It's a small grotto where burning methane bubbles out of the water and hisses out of cracks in the rocks behind it.
Also visible on the grounds of the water-fire cave, are sausage trees, which come from Africa. It has huge, inedible pods.
Sausage tree (Kigelia pinnata)
Crown of Thorns (Euphorbia milii)
Then we checked into a century-old hotel for the night, and had a dinner at a nearby restaurant that included muntjac meat, betel-nut flowers and stir-fried chayote shoots.
Then went to a hot spring that was one of the top five I'd ever been to in Taiwan. Several pools are available, including a few with the muddy spring water this area is famous for, one with herbs (it smelled like fairy grass, Mesona chinensis), and one with essential oil of cypress. There's also a small pool where you can soak your feet. The kicker is that in this pool are doctor fish. These small fish swim up to you, and with rasping mouths they clean the dead skin off your feet!
Refreshed, we returned to the hotel to retire for the night.
End of day one.
