YuanZuei Mountain Hiking

Chinese New Year is coming up in February so I have a month off from my Chinese classes and am been looking forward to catching up on the blog.  Jeff and I are well settled into our new home now and have been loving life as dog parents.  We've been doing our best to explore new restaurants although I'm embarrassed to admit that we still haven't gone to the famous FengJia Night Market.  Our neighborhood in downtown is so interesting that we often just walk around the park or nearby streets exploring shops, street vendors, cafes, and bars that we haven't been to.  

Back in December, our Taiwanese friends Kaku and Annie took us on an incredible but frightening hike up YuanZuei Mountain.  Without knowing the difficulty of the hike, we decided to take Oolong along and Jeff offered to drive us all in the van.  As we wound our way up the mountain through the fruit trees, poor Oolong got sick twice along the way.  As we started hiking Oolong quickly recovered from her car sickness and was clearly having a blast pulling me up the mountain with her harness.  

Can't beat this view!

Cloud forest

 About half way up, the trail became very steep and required ropes and ladders to pull yourself up the cliffs.   Going back would have been difficult because the traffic was one way and the narrow trail was very crowded.   Without having many options, Jeff tied Oolong to himself and hauled her up the mountain.  As we arrived at the top, Annie translated the Chinese for us saying that the crowd was calling Jeff "super hero" and "strong man".   I'm guessing there were some other comments that she left out such as "crazy whitey".

Annie was our photographer during the journey

Photo of the year and Dad of the year

At the top of the mountain.

There was a huge line to go down the other side

You can just see Oolong's head peaking out as she hangs from the harness strapped to the front of Jeff.  Kaku gives us the thumbs up as we cheer Jeff on.  

On our way home we stopped at a persimmon stand on the side of the road and bought the sweetest persimmons I've ever had.  The hike was a great getaway and we'll definitely be heading back sometime!

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