Alishan Forest Part I...

Where to begin! OK, so the morning we left I got up at 6:00am to run before we left. Mom, Tom, Wan Chun and I took a cab to the train station at 8 to catch the 9:00am train to Alishan. The train ride was three and a half hours. The scenery on the way up was great! Mountains covered in clouds and fog. I've posted one of the pics I took from the train. The peaks are a lot higher than I expected, probably around 7k to 8k. Once we got to Alishan we searched out some lunch because there was no food on the train. We needed to make sure we had a room first so we found our hotel, then got lunch in the main square (really touristy). From there we ventured out into the forest. There are numerous paths to be followed, some easy and some not so much. We started out ambitious but not all of us could keep the pace up so we ended up doing the fairly east paths. Still the easy path provided lots to see and do. I posted one of me in this giant hollow tree stump. We hiked around the forest for almost 4 hours before we made it back to the square. Tom had hunted down a place to buy coffee so we all took a coffee break after the long afternoon. The square has lots of small shops and stores where you can buy all kinds of useless stuff to give to friends and family. So of course we had to hit them up too. After that we ate some dinner, a much bigger and better meal than lunch. We ate 5 different entrees and a big pot of soup which was more than enough for the 4 of us and it only cost us $22 US! By now it was getting late, around 9:00pm and we had been up early so we decided to get some rest. Besides we had to get up early again because we were going to go see the sunrise from the viewing platform at the top of the mountain, but that will have to wait till part II… Tony