We decided to brave the weekend crowds and take the Maokong gondola up to the top.  It goes over the forest canopy and deposits you at the top among small tea farms. It's supposed to start raining next week so we thought we'd try to do a bunch of outdoors stuff this week.  I gess it is the 40th anniversary of Hello Kitty.  The gondolas were all decked out in Hello Kitty stuff, there were vendors everywhere selling anything Hello Kitty, and every single Taiwanese child was there soaking up the Hello Kitty ambiance....needless to say Zoe ran in the opposite direction!  We took the gondola up but decided to walk away from all the crowds.  There is a hiking trail that you can take from the top down through the forest, through the tea farms terraced into the hills,  and through bamboo stands.  The trail is paved and has steps upon steps traversing the steep hillsides.  The kids moaned and groaned as there was a lot of steep up and down.  The topo maps were hugely inaccurate and we got lost a few times, but made it down to Zhinan Temple, which is the second to the last stop on the gondola.

  -K

Save me Hello kitty is invading the earth! They're going to convert us all! Ahhhhhhh!I know I'll take the gondola to escape them but it's too late they're already there! They're every where! There were none at the last stop or throughout the forest thank goodness. Walk up a steep stupid hill to get to the station. I take the gondola back to the beginning where the hello Kitty fair has grown! I run to the subway to escape them and guess what! The signs in the subway are advertising hello Kitty! You can't escape them!

Me,
Out!


After we passed the hello kitty thing, we took the gondola all the way to the top. We got a map and left but the map was confusing. We decited to follow the map to a temple but it took us in a complete circle. After finally finding the path we wanted to take, we headed to the potholes. Mom and Zoe decited to get a closer look at the potholes. We then decided to find the temple but there were 2 paths that we could take. We took one which took us to a road but then we didn't know which way to go. Taking one of the roads, we found a sign that pointed the way to the gondola where the temple was. Supposedly, to get to the gondola you had you first climb above the gondula then go down the hill. We walked around the temple and then finally got on the gondula to go back down but by then it was 3:00ish. By the time we had lunch, we weren't hungry for dinner.

 -MH

Maokong gondola at 40th anniversary for Hello Kitty

Maokong gondola