I woke up early on Saturday with the intent of cycling out to Zhongliao’s [中寮] Dragon and Phoenix Waterfalls [龍鳳瀑布]. The weather was cool, but quite tolerable once I hit the road. Regular readers will recognize the temple pictured above from the conclusion of my previous biking trip.

View the large.

My first stop was Shuangwen Elementary School [爽文國小], which is one of several schools rebuilt after the destructive 7.3 magnitude 921 Earthquake. After hitting the road again, I found the Longan Forest Bike Path [龍眼林自行車道]:

This is for drying Longan Fruit:

The deserted path had charming distance markers:

The path follows the Zhangping River [樟平溪], which was more or less followed all the way to the waterfalls:

I headed up a side route to Yuetaoxiang Farm [月桃香農場] thinking there was something interesting up ahead, but little did I know that all that was there were a couple cabins for vacationers, oh well, the workout was nice.

The side route up to Xiashuiku Farm [下水堀農場] was a much more visually rewarding distraction:

I was invited by a couple doing some work on the temple below for tea, unfortunately I had to decline because I knew I would chat for hours if a pot of tea was in front of me:

Next door was the Xiashuiku Ecological Farm [下水堀生態農場], which is probably more interesting when it is open:

Not to say the side route wasn’t worth it, the scenery made it all worthwhile:


Next stop was Qingshui Elementary School, the second school I visited which had to be rebuilt after the 921 Earthquake:

The very colorful Xinfo Temple [心佛寺] is on the way to the waterfalls:

Before long I was at the parking lot for the waterfalls, a kind farmer at the entrance gave me a couple bananas:


There’s a lovely raised wooden walkway to the waterfall… until…

…visitors come across the large section that was wiped out from the previous typhoon. The waterfalls are still accessible by simply walking across the large stones in the riverbed up to the concrete section of the pathway.

First stop is the Phoenix Waterfall [鳳瀑布]:

Followed by a short walk to the Dragon Waterfall [龍瀑布]:

There’s a lot of great wildlife around the area, I’ll be posting most of them as Daily Photos, but here’s one:

The trip home was rather uneventful until I made the boneheaded decision to take a different route back which was fine and dandy until I saw this sign which wasn’t very fun after becoming tired and running out of water: