Geology Playground
Trip Start
Nov 17, 2006
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16
19
Trip End
May 09, 2007
Yeliou,
Taiwan
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Yeliou is close to Keelung, about 30 minutes drive west along the north coast, but it might as well be in another world. The village itself is nothing special, but jutting out into the sea is a spit of land, almost 2km long and only a hundred meters or so wide. Taiwan was formed because of volcanic action due to the big fault line running close to the coast (there's a line of islands all the way from the Philippines to Japan to Kamchatka in Russia, following this fault line), and is still rising out of the sea. Not much mind you, but enough to have caused an amazing array of erosion to the rock on this tiny spit of land.
The area is covered in many different kinds of rock formations - mushroom rocks where softer rock has been worn away, leaving balls of harder rock sitting on thin 'necks', chess board type squares where cracks have been caused by pressure in the rock, honeycomb rocks, where again softer parts have been eroded, leaving lines of hard rock, and a lot of other things i don;t know the name for
Honeycomb rocks
. The spit was vary flat for the first 600m or so - this is where the famous "Queen's Head" rock is as well. One of the mushroom rocks, from one angle it really does look like a woman's head. It means this area is swamped with bus loads of Taiwanese, Japanese and Korean tour groups, but the rest of the spit is thankfully mostly Granny-free, due to the massive cliff that rises out of the ocean. The land suddenly rises up - one side is a steep incline, but the other is an almost vertical cliff down to sea. The hill itself is covered in lush, dense green plants. There's wildlife too!!! I saw a huge gecko-type lizard, and there were quite a few birdwatchers up there too. They're all kitted out in their camouflage gear and their huge telephoto lenses waiting for the birds to show up, and I prance past in my bright pink skirt, waiting for them to move their tripods off the whole of the path. Don't think that went down well!
The views from the point were beautiful - very very rugged scenery (as far as Taiwan goes). So much green, so much space. Makes a big change after the overpopulated mess of Taoyuan!! You can either way down the coast (but not too far, it was really hazy), and the rocks ate the foot of the cliffs are all weird too - lots of patterns and grid cracks and general craziness. At the bottom of the hill-side is weird too. There's a big almost flat platform, then the hill jumps up out of it. The rock is covered in the honeycomb pattern, and weird squares filled with concentric rings. Looks like something from a Klimt piece, just without much colour.
Not really much else to say - the scenery was breathtaking, it looked like it could have been the surface of the moon (in a green, tree like kind of way...). There's no way I can really describe it, I'll try to add some photos asap!
