Sunday 3 November 2024

Today was another day off the bikes. This is not just a bike tour, it is a site seeing tour as well. We had planned to take the Alishan Railway, an historic railway up to the mountain region of Alishan. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get tickets and the regular train wasn’t running today. We decided to go up to Shizhou by bus and walk the Tea Trails.

There were several buses leaving for Alishan, stopping at Shizhou along the way. We got the 7:40 bus by my watch. As we checked the time later both Ralf’s phone and my phone indicated it was an hour later. I think there was a time change somewhere in the world and my watch didn’t get the memo, now my watch doesn’t match the actual time in Taiwan.

However, we had a wonderful time in Shizhou. The first trail was called the Mist trail , the second one was the Tea Trail and the third one was the Cloud trail. The various trails were quite challenging as we were at 1699 metres and climbing uphill until we got half way through the Cloud trail and then it was downhill.

After we got off the bus in Shizhou, we had to walk up the road for about 1 km before we found the first trail called the Mist Trail.

I think they should rename these trails, because we saw more tea bushes and people picking the leaves on the first section. As we crossed from that trail to the tea trail, the clouds rolled in and it was very misty.  The cloud trail can stay the same, as you are often walking above the clouds..

We went through three different eco-systems, very similar to the eco-systems that the Botanical Gardens had created in Taichung. Tea, bamboo and forest.

The tea grown here is primarily green tea. Shizhuo has its own unique advantages for growing good tea. The altitude of the tea area is between 1200 and 1700 meters. The temperature difference is about 10 degrees, with sufficient relative humidity. In summer, the highest temperature is seldom over 25 degrees. Tea leaves do not age due to growing too fast so the tea tastes mellow and not bitter. It grows well at these high altitudes and soils.

You could smell the tea as we passed the pickers. They were all shouting to one another. One of them shouted Good morning to us. I asked if we could take a photo and she said yeah o.k and then turned her back on us as the foreman was coming to check up on the workers. 

At the top of the cloud trail we came across a group of about 4 or 5 people stopped for a rest and snack.

One of the ladies offered us some food. We had no idea what it was until she broke the shell and it looked like a chestnut only softer. She gave us the whole bag to take with us, she also offered us eggs. We declined the eggs but we did take the whole bag of chestnutty things. Whatever the nut thing was it was really good.

Everyone on the walks were very chatty and helpful. It was lovely to be out forest bathing!!

On the way down, we took photos of the flora and fauna.

We were almost at the end when I spotted a very large spiders web with dozens of spiders in it, slight scream from me and walking very quickly away from them. Ralf took a photo and I think he has put it on his facebook page, with a warning for us Arachnophobics.

We got back to the hostel at 4:00 p.m. and are catching up on a few things before we head out for something to eat.

Back on the road again tomorrow.