Taipei Maokong Gondola

The day before the tour started we took a gondola over the Taipei forest in the Maokong mountains just east of the city.  It was such a great experience that I wasn't expecting to be all that great at all.  The great thing about modern technology is you can just google "Things to do in _______", pick an activity or location, and be there within thirty minutes.

The gondola took off from the entry of the Taipei zoo.

My friend Katie and I on the MRT (train) to the zoo entrance.

This is where the cabins come down from out of the sky and you get on.

Got my ticket.

Within ten seconds of taking off you could instantly see the Taipei 101 building hovering over the top of the mountains.  It was such an awesome sight.  Eventually the entire city was visible the higher you go.

Also...

We paid a little extra to have a glass bottom cabin where you can have an even better view of everything around you and below you.  It was awesome!

The gondola takes you on about a 20 minute ride up to the Maokong village.  It was mainly a tourist trap for tea sampling and obscure restaurants.

So we decided to just start walking along the road to see where it led us.  After a few minutes there was a sign that said "Zhinan Temple" with an arrow pointing forward so we thought it couldn't be that far and might as well see a temple while we're up here.

A view from the road of the Taipei 101 and some of the city.

Seriously that thing could probably be seen from outer space.

After a while the walk started to feel semi-long and we began questioning the distance.  But the signs kept saying the temple was ahead of us so we just kept going.

Oh yes, and above us between all the phone wires for the entire duration of this walk were these beauties...

Honestly, I have never in my life seen spiders this size.  Pictures do them no justice just as how big they were.  They were monstrous.  I wasn't scared or creeped out, just fascinated.  Good thing we didn't see any move...then there would have been issues.

There was a point after about 45 minutes where we thought "This walk is getting ridiculous!  How far away is this temple!?"  Cars passed us and slowly the strangers who were walking around and with us slowly started to fade until it was just us.  We had reached the point (at least in our minds) to where it would have made more sense to keep going than to turn around and go back.

Well, the walk ended up being THREE MILES LONG!...as highlighted by the blue line below.  We had no clue when we started it would be this long.  And while 3 miles doesn't seem thaaat bad, remember this is August in Taiwan, and much of it was uphill.  I actually felt great during and after...but the friends I was with...well, poor things.

We walked from the purple dot to the red dot.  The red dot is where the temple was and by the time we reached it, we didn't even care to see it!  Luckily, there was a gondola station there as well so we were able to catch that and take it back to where we got on the first time.

Come visit me and we'll be sure to take the gondola trip.

Minus the walk and spiders.