The last stop on our drive into the mountains is the Eryanping Tea Trail. It is quite a famous trail so we are happy we are able to find place in the free parking lot instead of the paid and farther away secondary parking lot. We are here in the highlands and the weather is already significantly cooler which is nice and we are looking forward to the hike.
It is not a long hike and we are planning to do it up to the end until we see that it is uphill. Relentlessly uphill through the forest for more than one kilometer. We are already quite tired so we decide to go only as far as we can, maybe to see the tea fields and then return.
The views from the trail are quite beautiful with the valley views being expansive and the green shrubs and tree given the trail a jungle like feeling.
What we don’t like as much is the number of people hiking it. Even though the parking lot was not completely full the trail seems to be. There are always people in front and behind as you climb so you cannot rest and you cannot listen for birds as there is always at least one group speaking loudly close to you.
Even so we manage to see a few beautiful birds including a target bird we already had given up on. The Black necklaced Scimitar Babbler was supposed to be viewable in multiple spots we visited till now, including in Taipei, but only here we finally catch a glimpse of this beautiful bird together with Taiwan Scimitar Babbler also interested in us.
And then finally we arrive at tea fields and some great views all around. We are exhausted at this point so we decide to maybe return soon after enjoying the tea fields and the views for some time.
And there is a great turnaround point just ahead, the first pavilion. So we crawl up to it with many stops on the way listening to birds as most groups seem to have passed us and there are fewer people in our stretch of the trail.
The views from the pavilion are quite impressive, you can see far in the valley and maybe even catch a glimpse of the ocean in the distance.
But even the great views cannot convince us to continue the climb to the 2nd pavilion, one pavilion is good enough for us. Especially given that we have seen the tea fields we wanted and even found one of the birds that escaped us till now.
Descending is more easy or so it should be but our knees are protesting now given the abuse they are suffering. So we continue to stop whenever there is a lull in the flow of people and look for birds which seem to have come out of hiding now.
The lower elevations are more bamboo forests and keeping an eye open rewards us with another special bird, a rufous-caped warbler, another lifer and another bird we didn’t think we will be able to see. And then we are back to the parking, it is time to go to our accomodation and check and rest. Or do we still have energy for firefly watching? Guess we will see when we arrive.
