Yehliu Geopark

For my birthday Adrien and I went to “Yehliu Geopark.” Located in the northeastern park of Taiwan there is a small sliver of land that goes out to a point to the ocean. It is definitely a unique area for many reasons. Rock formations that resemble anything from a queen’s head to a dragon's head.

The name Yehliu comes from the Pinpu language and when it is translated into “devil’s cape.” My guess is the natives would go out to this point and see all these crazy looking rocks then think they were demonic.

Another theory of the origin of the name comes from a story where traders would come to shore with bags of rice and the native people would use sharpened bamboo sticks to cut small holes into their bags. After that they would pick up the rice that fell out. In Taiwanese Yeh means savage and lui means steal. Hence the second theory meaning savages steal.  

So is it worth the trip? It is but there are crowds and if you want to take a picture of the famous queen’s head you have to wait in a line and watch countless people take selfie after selfie. Then you feel awkward standing in front of the rock without a person in front of it.

In my opinion the best rock formation was the dragon’s head. The best thing about it is there were not many people waiting to take pictures of it. Another intriguing thing was all the fossilized sand dollars imbedded in the rocks. This is the first time I have ever seen this and as far as I could tell the Taiwanese people were paying little to no attention to them.