Hiking Elephant Mountain and Baishawan

Two weeks ago on Saturday I “hiked“ up Elephant Mountain at the border of Taipei. The entrance of the hiking trail is very close to the last station of the red MRT line - “Xiangshan”. I say “hiking”, because again it was basically stairs not a nice path. The stairs are also very low, it’s weird walking them and from time to time we just randomly walked some side paths and explored the mountain ourselves. But the view on top paid for the effort going up and I got some nice pictures, not from the city but from the nature and of course (can’t miss) giant spiders! 

 

I was glad, we went up early, because we had a nice spot to sit and wait for the sunset. Around 4pm the peak was very crowded and going down meant to walk with many other people. I didn’t got nice shots from Taipei at night, but I have this memory in my head, and it is very beautiful. 

Here "some" pictures, if you know the exact plant or animal species and there is a fault or know explanation in a subtitle at all - please tell me or just write a comment! 

After some google-research I guess this is a Scarlet Dragonfly.

Here I guess Blue Marsh Hawk.

First View on Taipei 101

Huge City..

..with a huge Tower (508m).

Red Hibiscus.

Earthworm crossing our path..

...and a snail following.

Giant spider - never to miss!

View from the peak..

..the sun sets and..

the city starts to glow.

On Sunday I went to Baishawan, a white sand beach with some friends and we bumbed into a kite festival which was interesting. We basically enjoyed the sun and the ocean and just relaxed from studying. 

Here some pictures: 

Stay positive!

Yihua.