Continued from Taiwan Day 5 Part 1.

That’s pretty old.

We are dropping down into a valley.

Reminds me of a sequoia national forest. In the groves of trees, there’d be a few that would just dwarf most of the others.

Getting sunny out there. It’s getting a little warm if we are walking under the sun.

Siblings. CL hitting Little KL in the stomach. Those two have been picking on each other this entire trip. Also, little KL was acting up this whole time so RL kept “jokingly” threatening to throw him off the mountain as a sacrifice to appease the forest gods.

The girls refused to stand by little KL.

Go stand together and pretend to like your brother!

I waited for the kids to get on the suspension bridge then jumped up and down.

Three generation tree.

Back at our hotel. The whole hike took about 2 hours. Not a bad start to the day, just enough to get some steps in.

Rest and chill time for the kids.

Rest and chill time for the grownups.

In other news, Ah Ma succeeded where I failed. She managed to sweet talk one of the managers of the hotel restaurant into selling her one of the Taiwan Beer bottle openers!!! Thanks Mom!!!! This will make an amazing souvenir.

Bright blue sky today.

Another photo of the landslide that took out the rail track from our hotel. This train route is almost always under constant repair due to landslides and whatnot…maybe it’s not the safest train to take.

Waiting for our hotel shuttle to take us back to the visitor’s center by the Alishan station. From there, we wait for our transport to take us down the mountain.

Traveling is tiring, traveling with kids and parents is even more tiring.

So cute.

PL was very excited to give the hotel driver a tip.

A short drive and we are back at Alishan station. Now, we’ve got about an hour to walk around before our driver shows up.

Train!

Of course, there’s a 7 Eleven up here. Love it.

My face says it all about being a father.

That’s quite the fancy building for a post office.

Memories of my childhood. Green for regular mail, red for rapid.

Waiting.

My haul from 7 Eleven, gotta get my fill in while I’m in Taiwan.

What…I looked inside and it looks just like a regular family type toilet. I guess it provides more privacy?

At the visitor’s center, you can buy boards of cypress.

Our driver arrives, and down the mountain we go. We all expect this to be a really rough one and a half hour windy ride down the mountain, and it’s proving to be true. It’s one of the windiest I’ve ever remember being on.

Groves of diseased dead bamboo.

I guess some logging is still allowed here.

Road repair due to landslide.

Despite dramamine, CL starts to feel very carsick and threw up. Our driver had throwup bags for everyone in the car because so many people get carsick on this drive down. Poor girl.

We made a little rest stop part way to let her throw up some more and see if she’ll recover a little. She’s feeling better after throwing up, and let’s hope she can hold on for the rest of the way down. We are only about halfway down the mountain.

Nothing but curve after curve.

About halfway down the mountain, we started seeing some tea plantations.

More tea plantations.

Getting closer to flatter and more straight roads.

Made it!!! CL was able to hold it together for the second half. That was a rough trip for most of us, even with dramamine.

Lotus fields.

Chiayi, this area is known for their turkey and rice specialty.

At the HSR station. We were supposed to visit several more sites on the drive down the mountain, but that would put us back to Taichung at around 7:30pm, which would be way too late for our energy level. So we told our driver to just drive us straight down and we can catch an earlier high speed train back to Taichung. Think it was a good call.

Our turkey and rice bento that we got for dinner.

Yum…tastes like turkey and rice.

No, not ah gong’s head. 282 km/h, so 175mph. Pretty fast.

Back in Taichung. My grandma’s apartment is right next to the Ferrari dealership, fancy.

Been a long day of hiking, getting car sick, and transportation. Some chill time before dinner.

Dinner is at a hot pot spot at the mall across the street.

Honestly, we were all pretty tired. Eating out tonight felt more like a hassle than anything else. We ate to fill our tummies, jetlag kicking in. RL and I took the crazy kids back home early and left all the other grownups to slowly finish their meals. Time for bed.

To be continued at Taiwan Day 6.