Taian Scenic Area

Yesterday afternoon Nok and I took the chance to head to a place called Taian that we’d heard a bit about. Taian is home to the Taian Hot Spring Scenic Area, which supposedly has some of the best natural hotsprings in Taiwan. It is also home to some beautiful mountains and has a dozen decent hiking trails in the area.

On the train, Taian is just two stops away, maybe 15 minutes. I incorrectly assumed that it would be just a quick drive, but we ended up driving about 65 kilometers each way, spending more than three hours total in the car. Taiwanese traffic is terrible!

Another thing we discovered during the drive is that Scroggins is not a good car dog. For the first hour, he was riding in the front seat with Nok. After a while, Nok asked me if I smelled something nasty. I replied that no, I couldn’t smell anything. It was a second later that I heard Nok exclaim, “Oh no! He pooped!”

Sure enough, Scroggins had managed to poop on the floor of our car. Luckily, even though he was sitting on the seat with Nok, none of it got on her or the seat.

So we stopped by the road and cleaned up his business, then off we went again. Well, it wasn’t more than 15 minutes later that we heard a disgusting hacking sound coming from the backseat. Seems old Scroggins had gotten a little carsick and vomited all over the backseat. I had the pleasure of cleaning up after him this time, with nothing but a plastic garbage bag and a little bit of water.

But when we finally arrived, Scroggins was great. The place itself was a minor disappointment in that it was a bit of a tourist trap and no springs were available to the public. A bunch of resorts have moved in and started charging like $10 a head just to enjoy the privilege of a natural hot spring. So we didn’t get to go to any hot springs, but we did follow a trail up a large river in search of a waterfall. And even though the trailhead was pretty crowded and parts of the trail had some people, once we got upstream a bit we were all alone in paradise.

It was a beautiful place, and I’m looking forward to getting to some of the more remote parts of Taiwan this week when the ‘rents come.

On the road to Taian. This road was called “Country Road No. 62.” It was windy and often very narrow, following the river as it climbed up into the mountains.

After we parked the car and walked a couple of kilometers up the river, we were completely alone and surrounded by beautiful mountains.

Another shot from further up the river. I was extremely tempted to go for a swim, but the icy cold water got the best of me.

We came across this little waterfall a bit further upstream. We had headed up the trail in search of a waterfall, but I don’t think this is the one we were meant to find. Anyway, it was nice and a bit bigger than it may appear in the photo.

We climbed about halfway up the waterfall to get a better look. Scroggins proved to be a pretty good rock scrambler.

From halfway up the waterfall. I’m pretty bad about estimating heights, but this quite tall.

Nok wades through the icy, crystal clear water.

Scroggins sat and watched as we walked through the river. At first he was afraid of the water, but he soon learned to cope. We had to cross the river to get back, and I didn’t feel like carrying him, so soon enough he was swimming.

On the way back, Nok and I headed down a different trail. We soon came across this knotted rope leading down a 20 foot cliff. Nok waited at the top while I went down to have a look around. This really was straight down.

These impressive cliffs were the view I was greeted with when I got to the bottom of the rope..

From the bottom of the rope I also found that I was very near to this footbridge.

And back up the rope…

I stopped to take this shot of the sunset from halfway up the rope.

We stopped for a quick break on this excellent suspension bridge before we headed back to the car. From here, it was still another kilometer or so to the parking lot.