Sun Moon Lake

Every tourist visiting Taiwan gets taken to Sun Moon Lake. It's a scenic tourist resort approximately in the centre of the island. You're supposed to be able to see a crescent moon and a sun within its complex shape, but we were having trouble with this, despite it all being carefully pointed out.

Anyway, it was a nice place to spend a few hours. A day off between our first two big day hikes, and the higher altitude challenges to come.

What do hikers do at Sun Moon Lake? They hire bikes and become bikers of course! We were told we didn't have time to cycle right round it. It's over 30km after all. But we did a few km of it, and generally had some fun. We were all a bit surprised though by how many of the local tourists seemed totally out of their depth on bicycles. We whizzed past them as they wobbled and weaved! Seems most Taiwanese abandoned their bikes decades ago, and moved on to motor bikes and cars. You do still see lots of sporting cyclists though, and Taiwan is a very proud centre for the world's bicycle manufacturing.

After our bike ride, we were promised a swim at a lakeside pool. Turned out the pool wasn't yet built. It was all a bit bizarre, wandering through a town centre in our swimming togs, to a swimming pool that didn't exist. And I loved how tour guide Samantha managed to hide her embarrassment about it, until she owned up to that several days later!