Excellent weekend at Wu-Lai and Ping-Lin

After a very busy week at Taipei, it was time for taking an small break at the Taipei surroundings. I took my backpack, wore my excursion clothes, and had my camera ready. Me and a colleague departed on Saturday  towards the small town of Wu-Lai, where we experienced the permanent market on the main street, the Atayal aborigine food and relaxing hot springs at the Full Moon spa. We also visited the Yun-Hsien park, where you can only arrive by cable-car (The cable car station is located 1.3 km south of Wulai, just follow the signals or take a taxi. Another options was taking a mini-train, but the day we went it was not functioning, and it seems I has been like that for a while). The cable-car station is located in an small "annex" of Wu-Lai, located right in front of the Wu-Lai waterfalls; the Yun-Hsien park is located on top of the falls. The park have different amusements... nothing really interesting, but the mountain hiking! that was my favorite part of the visit and worth the NT$250 of the cable-car and park ticket.

Wu_Lai town

 Another view of Wu-Lai

 Wu-Lai power house

 Mini-train station

 Private bonsai garden at Wu-Lai town (behind the mini-train station)

 Wu-Lai waterfalls.

 view from the cable car

 view of Wu-Lai downtown from the cable-car

 cable-car

 falls at Yun-Hsien

 some Yun-Hsien fauna

 mountain hike at Yun-Hsien park

aborigine food (some ferns, stem leaves and flower buds)

On Sunday we traveled to Ping-Lin, a famous tea region in New Taipei City state. We visited the Tea Museum. The exhibition will teach you all what it needs to be known about tea, and the park backyard is a tea plantation full of hike roads, shrines and observatory decks; it's worth to spend all the morning there. if you are luck you may find the path up to the mountain peak. Ping-Lin local touristic transportation is free (or at least it was free on sunday :)), and you can take the mini-buses from the Tourism Office located across the main bridge (front-right to the museum exit). This time we took a bus to the Nam-Shan temple, located 9 Km north of Ping-Lin, up in the mountains (15 mins). The road to the temple is full of scenic views and tea plantations.. so prepare your camera at all times and fasten your belts because the drivers are wild and don't care about the extremely winding road.. they will drive as fast as they can! (yahoo!).  Right in front of the tourism office you may take a bus that'll take you back to the Xindian MRT station (in about 45 mins)