Day 13 - Alishan
Alishan 阿里山國家森林遊樂區
MingFang Tea Farm 明芳茶園
Sunset at Eryanping Observation Deck 隙頂二延平步道觀雲平台
Ah, the beautiful and famous Alishan, known for it’s famous sunrises, sunsets and sea of clouds. A tour around Taiwan isn’t complete without a visit to this famous national forest. The park itself is beautiful, even the amazing pictures online don’t do it justice. Yet the park is just part of the story, there is so much to see and experience outside of the park! The tricky part is that it requires a bit of luck to see the breathtaking sunrises and sunsets, especially the sunsets at the end of the sea of clouds. We spent two days here and got really lucky on our second day!
The tea at Alishan is world famous, so many people buy tea while they’re here. We were looking for more, however… we wanted the whole tea experience. Many people have done wine tasting, not many have done tea tasting. We lucked out with Mingfang Tea Farm! The owners were super friendly and patient, and gave us the VIP treatment. The tea tasting was free, the picture-taking was free, and we were more than happy to buy some premium tea from them in return!
The sea of cloud is well known here, but the cloud waterfall was a pleasant surprise. We just happened to catch it while doing our tea tasting. It was an amazing sight! There’s a Chinese 可遇不可求, which means you may meet it but you can’t ask for it. that’s the case with the cloud waterfall. We were luck to catch it unexpectedly!
Alishan 阿里山國家森林遊樂區
The famous Alishan National Forest lives up to its reputation. It is gorgeous! The paths are well laid out and easy to follow, with picturesque scenery at just about every turn. Take your time and enjoy nature with all its glory! Allow for at least 3-4 hours in the park to explore, longer if you want to explore at a relaxed pace.
Voyagers tips: (1) Get here early to park at the parking lot inside the park. Once it’s full, you’ll have to find parking outside. We got to the entrance at around 8:50am and the parking lot was almost full. Once parked, you buy tickets for either the bus or the train to get to the top, where the walking tour starts. The bus comes more frequently than the train. We decided to take the bus up and the train back down, which worked out nicely.
MingFang Tea Farm 明芳茶園
There are many tea makers and tea farms in Alishan, just about one in every corner. We wanted more than just buy tea here though, we wanted the full tea tasting experience, where we get to walk around the tea farm and do some tea tasting with the owners. There was surprisingly little info about this online.
Eluanbi Light House 鵝鑾鼻燈塔
The southern-most light house near the southern tip of Taiwan, this is a popular landmark that almost all tourists will visit. As such, there is plenty of parking and shops for the tour groups. The light house is a short walk away from the parking lot; there are paths to the bottom but the path ends without access to the beach, just the view. The large grassy area by the light house is a nice place to chill and relax before hitting the road again!
Maobitou (Cat Nose) 貓鼻頭
We were glad we visited Maobitou! It was a bit out of the way on our drive up to Kaohsiung, but the ocean view here is beautiful, and seeing the cat rock was pretty cool! The walk up to the viewing point was pretty easy, and the breeze felt nice! We had a funny moment where some of us thought we saw the cat rock and were comparing notes on which one looked more like the cat, well before we actually got to the viewing spot of the actual cat nose rock!
Voyagers Tips: To make the small background rock appear bigger next to a person, take the picture far away from the subject then zoom in. It’s a cool trick whenever you want the background object to appear bigger.