Taiwan ( 23°52'8.21"N; 120°56'10.76"E)

Hi, for my last stop on my tectonic tour I will be enjoying the delights of the island nation of Taiwan.  After a relatively short flight from Timika I checked into my hotel on the northern side of the capital city of Taipei.  The hotel was perfect, it was centrally located so all of the best restaurants in the city were literally at my finger tips. 

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3113/2656959177_c51074d961_o.jpg

 

Since all of the attractions of the city were in walking distance I decided to take a stroll down to my favorite restaurant in town Din Tai Fung.  This amazing dumpling house offers some of the best food around.  My favorite are the juice pork dumplings. 

 



http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=ding+tia+fung&FORM=HDRSC2#view=detail&id=8E6DEA17AEBDF18F34E8EBCE185249F4B6541EBB&selectedIndex=65

 

After a fabulous dinner, I strolled back to my hotel with a full stomach.  I love Taipei,    

one of my favorite parts is the Taipei 101.  It was the tallest building in the world in 2004, but the reason I really love it is because of its architecture, without it Taipei just would not be Taipei.  It really makes the city look the part. 

http://skyscrapercenter.com/images/albums/userpics/10005/Taipei101_Ext-NightContext_TaipeiFinancialCenterCorporation.jpg


 

I could see the building from my hotel room, so I ended up staring at it for a little while before drifting off to sleep.  After looking at that building all night I decided that I had to have a look at it up close.  So I walked over and just asked the man at the desk if I could ride the elevator to the top just to take a look.  Surprisingly he obliged and before I new it I was speeding up the elevator with the city of Taipei flashing farther and farther away.  When I reached the top I could see all of the magnificent city.  As I gazed down I realized that just outside the city limits mountains rose and fell as far as the eye could see.  I new from my tectonic plate experience that some islands like Hawaii are just volcanoes that have erupted over and over again, so the island is basically a mountain rising up from the sea.  This makes the terrain very mountainous, but on Taipei there are no volcanoes.  I immediately realized that coming to Taipei for the good food and view was great but I had overlooked the fact that it was also a rare find when it comes to tectonic plates.  Taiwan lies directly on a continental convergence boundary or a collision boundary.  When two continental plates converge it is called a collision boundary because since they are both not very dense instead of one of them subducting under the other they meet and start to go up creating mountains.  Hence the mountainous terrain of Taiwan. 

http://www.i-study.co.uk/images/images/photo_album/Tectonics/collision.gif


 

The collision boundary in Taiwan is rare because if you think about it Taiwan is an island so how can the boundary be two continental plates, shouldn't one of them be oceanic?  The reason for this is that the Taiwan collision boundary is actually the Yangtze continental plate colliding with a small continental plated edge of the Philippine oceanic plate.  The small continental plate is part of the Philippine plate, sometimes tectonic plates are a mix of oceanic and continental plates, that is truly why Taiwan is a rare find concerning tectonics.  This collision boundary also causes large amounts of earthquakes in the area.  Taiwan has a history of large quakes ranging all the way up to 7.8. Yeah, that is a large earthquake.  The most recent earthquake in Taiwan was in 6.1 magnitude in march of this year. 

 



http://www.greenfudge.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/earthquake-taiwan.jpg



 

 

This will be my last blog post for a while.  I am going under cover to find the highest peaks of the highest mountains, hopefully I will make it out alive and be able to take you on a tour of some of the most remote mountains the planet has to offer.  For now this is your travel guide signing off. 

 

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