Sun Moon Lake Continued

So by the end of our late-night tea-and-cards foray, the Sun Moon Lake trip had grown to include everyone that was at tea, plus Jenny, one of Eric's friends, and his 4 year old son.  Eric and his friend drove us to Sun Moon Lake, which took a little under two hours.  We got some great initial views of the lake from the road, but then we had a lot of trouble finding a parking spot before being stopped by a woman that was following us through the parking lot on her moped.  She told us that we could park in a nearby lot if we bought tickets to tour the lake on her company's boats.  Mind you, this was all in Chinese, but we got the gist of it between context and Fran's translating.  The boat tickets were sort of a hop-on-hop-off deal with three stops, one being the start and end of the trip.  The lake itself was beautiful.  It was pretty clear at first, and we could just make out distant mountains past the ones that immediately surround the lake.  As the day went on, those mountains disappeared into the clouds, eventually followed by even the nearby mountains before we left.  The water was greenish-blue, and there were lots of boats, mostly medium sized ferries, moving in every direction on it.  See for yourself:

Those characters represent Sun Moon Lake.  The Chinese characters, not the people characters.  Those are Maura and Tom.

Those distant mountains looked really big, and then they were gone for the rest of the day.

Having never been to Hawaii, I've decided that this was pretty much the same exact experience.  The only way to convince me otherwise is to buy us plane tickets.  I dare you.

From left: Fran, Joy, Maura, and Jenny.

This town was our next stop.

The mountains really were pretty majestic.  You can see the town in the bottom right corner.

At the second stop, we wandered through a few shops and ate dinner at a nice little restaurant.  We had noodles or rice, which were good, and a few shared side dishes.  One of those was a wild boar dish, and it was definitely one of my favorite foods that I've tried in Taiwan.  Really delicious.  Here's a few pictures from town:

Don't let your eyes deceive you: I'm reasonably sure that this woman was not the devil.  She actually seemed quite nice, no matter what those crispy birds said.

I almost forgot to take a picture of the boar.  This was all that was left when I remembered, mainly because I had eaten most of it.

This was a shop specializing in nougat, which is a pretty big product over here.  They all seemed to have nuts in them, so I sat this one out, but Maura tried some.  She said it was fine, but not something that she would eat too often.

Our last stop had several hiking paths, some of which led to a temple.  Stereotype alert: Taiwanese people generally don't seem to like walking long distances in the heat.  They tend to find it fairly shocking that Maura and I have occasionally walked to places over a mile away instead of taking a cab or stealing a car (maybe not stealing).  They didn't want to hike, but we still climbed up the steps to a smaller temple with some great views.  Also, the crowds were ridiculous, mainly with tourist groups from mainland China.  Here are those pictures:

The entrance to the area from the pier.

One of the better living statues that we've seen.

Sun Moon Lake behind us.

There was a long line of people waiting to take their picture next to that rock behind us.  Tour groups are the worst.

That's Joy and Eric's son playing in a ... thing that was there.

Like I said, there were BIG crowds at this particular place.

From there, we took the boat back to the starting pier, hung out for a bit, and then headed back to Taichung.  Here's one last picture of Sun Moon Lake:

Compare this to the first photos and you can see how much the clouds had crept in while we were there.

I slept off and on for the whole ride home, because I am completely incapable of staying awake here if I'm not moving or talking to someone.  That's all for our last weekend in Taichung.  Thanks for reading!