Taiwan Expedition Log

August 9-29, 2008
September 5, 2008 update

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Wednesday August 13, 2008

After an hour of driving, we finally made it through the city and hooked up with Highway 9, which would take us to the east toward the coastal city of Ilan. This windy road through the low mountains, which never rose over 2,000', slowed our travel pace to a crawl, which would become typical over the next couple of weeks. At least our slow pace allowed us to marvel and the strange vegetation combination such as alocasia, banana, and tree ferns growing under cryptomeria. We arrived in the coastal town of Ilan just after noon, where we parked and walked along Highway 9 until we found a delightful roadside caf\xe9. Although there was no one else inside but the staff, we took a gamble and were rewarded again with a 5-course lunch. Things are certainly looking up after a disastrous start. Our favorite sign for the day was the nearby and surely always popular, Fukun Hotel in Ilan ... surely it doesn't quite translate the way it sounds.

From Ilan, we picked up Highway 7 South, which was the major North-South route on the east coast. We were off to our overnight destination of Taiping Shan (Mt. Taiping). As we drove south, the road paralleled the Lanyang (Laniang) River at 1000' elevation. At this time the Lanyang River was only about 15' wide, but its massive river bed littered with sand and giant boulders, stretched 1500' in width and served to transport water that rushed down from the mountains during floods. As I mentioned earlier, Taiwan had just been hit by two typhoons in the month before we arrived, and it was evident even this massive river bed had recently topped its banks. As we traveled along Highway 7, we saw more and more instances where the river had undermined and washed out much of the roadside bank along the highway. The volume of water that must move through a 1,500' wide river bed is truly inconceivable.

It was here we first saw tetrapanax in the wild, where it formed large colonies on steep hillsides. Interestingly, as we rose in elevation, the leaves became much larger and the patches much smaller, which echos the difference we have seen in our garden with the less hardy lowland spreading form, compared to the hardier and larger-leafed T. 'Steroidal Giant'. While photographing the tetrapanax, we had our first encounter with an unusual Taiwan butterfly that seem to have 2-parted wings ... a part that moved and a part that didn't ... very cool.

By 3:15pm, we finally arrived at the base of Taiping Shan and paid our 400 New Taiwan Dollars (approximately 30 NTD=1 USD) admission at the guard gate. From here, it was a 45+ minute drive to our hotel near the top. As we headed toward the top, we set our GPS to track our elevation progress so we could watch which plants grew within each elevation range. Only a small number of plants thrived from bottom to top, most notably, the ubiquitous dwarf Petasites formosanus. These range differences are due to a number of factors including the need and tolerance for both cold and hot temperatures as well as the need and tolerance for moisture provided by fog at the mountain top.

We saw more Tetrapanax papyrifera (rice paper plant), primarily at elevations below 3,000', while the Cyathea spinulosa tree ferns disappeared as we topped 4,000' elevation. The Taiwanese Fatsia polycarpa started around 4,000' and lasted until we topped 6,000'. Above 6,000' and all the way to the top grew Schefflera taiwaniana ... a plant both of us had longed to grow. Interestingly, throughout our trip, we would only find the schefflera growing between 6,000 and 8,800' elevation, so its tolerance of our summer heat is certainly a question, but the idea of having a 25'-tall schefflera in the garden is truly exciting.

As we reached the Taiping Shan Recreation Area, we made a really great horticultural stop at an old railway station called the Jiancing Historic Trail at 6,350' elevation. Along the path were an incredible array of pileas and ferns including Woodwardia unigemmata with 6' long fronds and bright red new growth.

As dusk approached, a heavy fog rolled in, so we cut our trek short and headed on to our nearby hotel, the Taipingshan Villa at 6,142' elevation. Each National and Recreational Forest has a villa/hotel, since these areas are heavily used by the Taiwanese people to escape the big cities in the hot coastal towns ... especially on the weekends. The Taipingshan Villa consisted of a welcome center (don't miss the 700 year old cryptomeria stump) and a number of dormitory-like buildings lining both sides of what seemed akin to the eternal 'Stairway to Heaven'. The hike from the parking lot to our room was a conservative 300 steps, up which we slowly lugged our bags ... I see now why they call it luggage. This place would double as a great smoking cessation clinic if you had to hike these stairs many times.

After unpacking and getting ourselves clean, we trudged another 100 steps upward to the dining hall. The dinner was certainly less filling than our previous meals and didn't quite master the tastes great part either. Back in the room, we found the air-conditioning to be non-functional, but at least at this elevation, the night air, was a pleasant 64 degrees. The shower was typical for many Chinese hotels where the water just runs all over the bathroom floor. While we had cable television, watching the Beijing Olympics in Chinese just isn't our cup of green tea and Internet connections proved non-existent. Did I mention the hard beds ... sleeping on the concrete walkway outside would have provided a softer sleeping environment ... perhaps that's why there are so many spas everywhere.