Taiwan Trip: Day 4 (23/07/2013)

Wakening view!

The air was really cool on that early morning and the fact that nobody was there emphasized the venue’s grandeur and peacefulness. You can’t beat a shiny rising sun lapping a mountain’s bare green face as a wakening view. We went back to the Youth Hostel to have a Chinese buffet breakfast that was so-so considering its price. We bought some snacks and headed to the National Park Headquarters to figure out which trails were open, as frequent landslides and other joys often block the access to the latter. We only took Louis’ bike to allow me to take pictures and videos when he was driving.

The Tunnel of 9 Turns (closed)

We were forced to stop nearby the east entrance of the park as there were works going on to fix what seemed to be a huge landslide. Visitors were only allowed to drive through the area every two hours. We waited about 30 minutes under the already hot sun (it was 9:30am) and then joined the Headquarters. There, we were told that only the (beautiful) Tunnel of 9 Turns trail was closed, which is nonetheless quite fortunate. We started by the nearby ShaKaDang Trail (砂卡礑步道) that traces along the river of the same name at a low altitude. The first part takes you on a path along the cliff that often hangs just above your head.

ShaKaDang Trail

The trail was supposed to be closed after that part but we went on as it looked safe and we could leave the rather numerous non-properly equipped tourists behind (most of them were wearing flip-flops). We continued for about an hour along the river upon a large path until we reached a jungle area where another trail was starting. We thus turned back and couldn’t resist on our way to soak our feet into the crystalline river (though it’s obviously prohibited as the current is quite strong). It felt truly nice as the sun was fierce.

The sky often varies according to the 'ground altitude', being darker above mountains

Driving through the park is thrilling!

Rejoining our motorbike, we managed to be just on time to drive back through the works area without waiting. We then gained altitude and joined Buluowan (布洛灣) to have a set meal (once again so-so) and looked for two short hikes that we eventually couldn’t find. Instead we walked through a resort village that miserably faked an aboriginal village.

The BaiYang Trail entrance

Driving back to TianXiang (天祥), we left the bike at our hostel and set up for the magnificent BaiYang Trail (白楊步道). The entrance is located inside a car tunnel; there’s no pavement so that’s quite a challenge for a start. The entrance itself is a 380-meter long tunnel so you had better not be claustrophobic! We brought a torch that revealed much useful. The path is once again set along a cliff and follows another river; though larger, it is much (much!) higher and there are no fences at all! We were thrilled at times as we’re both a bit afraid of heights. There were very few people so we could fully enjoy the beauty of the flat walk. We passed several tunnels carved into the rock (again, bring a torch!) that also give you some fresh air. The trail takes you to a natural dam where the water rumble is powerfully noisy. A suspension bridge overhangs the scenery and takes you to a wooden platform where you can see the source of this rumbling: the two-layered BaiYang Waterfall (白楊瀑布) running high in the far distance.

Imagine the rumble!

We then pushed to the very end of the trail where a cave is home to a “water curtain”. Though it’s apparently been closed for years, people are still visiting it. We borrowed raincoats that are freely available at the entrance. And they are useful! We walked along a narrow path on the right but that didn’t prevent us from getting a shitload of water upon our heads. The water curtain itself is not much of an attraction but the ‘end-of-the-world’ cave atmosphere makes it so worthy and impressive. We actually saw a two-child family walking with their flip-flops directly into the river stream full of sharp rocks. The children seemed to struggle a lot while the dad was laughing. We sometimes don’t get these people’s sense of responsibility and safety…

                    

                          Proper equipment is key

'Water curtain' cave

On the way back "home"

Back at our Catholic hostel, we refreshed and went once again to the Youth Hostel that is the only restaurant option. While having our snack-dinner, we met a French dad who was travelling with his four children. Quite an effort, especially as they didn’t have their own means of transport! We also met back in our hostel an English mate who was studying geology: we guess he’s going to find all he’s looking for here!

Early dusk at Taroko

The Taroko Gorge has much to offer and is definitely a must-see. We could have easily spent another day as there’s plenty of trails. Just the fact of driving through the park is absolutely stunning. The constant ‘two-sky atmosphere’ (you can see a grey-brownish cloudy sky surrounding high peaks while experiencing a light-blue sky above rivers and in the views of the far coast) adds to the magic of the venue. There is actually so much to see that you might get used to it and lose the uniqueness feel of the place. We can assure you we fed our brains with exquisite memories. Be sure not to miss it if you get the opportunity!

 Fences are optional along the BaiYang Trail...

 

... But the views make it so worthy!

Taiwan Trip: Day 3 (22/07/2013)

Early morning at TianGong Temple

We woke up pretty early on that morning – around 6:00am – to take our shower as the temple's old watchman told us the night before he would close the toilet access at 6:30am so that early worshippers wouldn’t see two bare-chested foreigners passing by with their towels… The cold water and blood-starving mosquitos fastened our awakening; we then enjoyed the peacefulness and breathtaking views offered by the early morning hours of the temple and nearby Turtle Island.

Breakfast at 7/11

Having made our donation to the old watchman with quite ceremony (you pay what you want for the night), we hit the road heading south and quickly found a large 7/11 to have breakfast. We felt like truck drivers on an umpteenth trip. We stopped at Jiaosi (礁溪), a nice little town famous for its hot springs and nearby Wufengqi waterfall (五峰旗 大瀑布). We stopped at the information center looking for directions towards the waterfall. The first receptionist was eager to help but with English abilities even worse than ours in Chinese, she called upon her colleague who then called upon her superior. Talking with locals always leads to funny situations! We eventually managed to understand the directions thanks to the 80% Chinese/20% English discussion.

Wufengqi Waterfall

We got to the site and first hiked a few minutes to reach a protestant church perched on the other side of the hill. With the temperature, humidity and heavy bags on our back, that was enough to ruin our clothes for the rest of the day. At 11:00am. Better get used to it anyway! We then went to see the waterfall itself that was quite stunning. The highest layer is perhaps about 30m high. There is a small natural pool that allows you to soak your feet. There weren’t too many tourists so we could fully enjoy it. We actually talked to a young Mainland Chinese – she came from Xiamen – who was doing a two-week study trip in Taiwan.

Driving on Highway 9

We had our lunch at a McDonald’s (yeah you may blame us but it’s always a pleasure to pay only €3 for a full meal and extra burger) in Yilan (宜蘭). Driving through the city was a pain in the ass but the road then became beautiful between Suao (蘇澳) and Nanao (南澳). Simply imagine driving between the light blue Pacific Ocean on your left and majestic greeny mountains on your right. We then gained some height as the road became mountainous, which allowed us to get better views, even though driving along mad truck drivers overcoming you in the turns and fat polluting buses required us to show the utmost of our nascent piloting skills.

Views from Highway 9

First drive within Taroko

That did not last long however as the road became flat again and bordered by ugly industrial plants. We nonetheless drove relentlessly as we wanted to reach the National Park of Taroko (太魯閣國家公園), home to the famous Gorge, before dusk. So that’s quite tired, bored and dirty that we eventually made it to its entrance. But we were quickly rewarded: the first kilometers felt dreamy as we were driving through the park alone, taking the “gorge-ous” views of dramatic cliffs, impressive peaks lost in the clouds, tunnels carved right into the rock and rivers raging beneath our feet, the sceneries being completed with a surreal rose-yellowish sky.

Our wooden cabin for the night!

We reached the small resort of TianXiang (天祥) right at the center of the national park and looked for an accommodation. We were driving slowly when four dogs suddenly came hurtling towards us with gaping mouths! Frightened like hell, we floored the gas pedal – well more accurately tried to, but in these very cases, you tend to mix the accelerator with the brakes and the clutch... Louis engaged in a chassé-croisé with the biggest of them while I tried to scare another one with useless and frenetic kicks. We managed to escape from them and later grunted together about how dogs are dangerous and masters irresponsible. We eventually set camp at the Catholic Hostel which was just okay. It was old and desert, its large size and nighttime emphasizing the feeling, but did the job. The wooden cabin that served as our bedroom was acceptable in terms of cleanliness. We might not rate the showers with the same grade but at least got hot water (at times). We then had a rather expensive snack-dinner at the nearby Youth Activity Center that offered insane accommodation prices. We went back to our hostel and washed our clothes by hand like washerwomen – hey, it’s part of the hostel charm – before setting for a deserved good night sleep.

We drove about 200kms on day 3

Taiwan Trip: Day 2 (21/07/2013)

FuLong by day

Good morning FuLong! Woken up by the sun around 5am, and after a night that was not exactly what you would call “restful”, we got up at 6:45am and got out of the tent to avoid dying of suffocation! Living at the rhythm of the sun is both awesome and necessary, in a country where the sun sets everyday around 6pm; if you want to make the most of the little time you have, you had better play by the rules of Nature and force yourself to get up early, which we did throughout our trip. 

On our way to the TsaoLing Trail

Having completed our “morning deeds”, we set off for the CaoLing Historic Trail. This trail, often written in the Taiwan pinyin as “TsaoLing Historic Trail” (草嶺古道) was praised in both our Lonely Planet and Rough Guide to Taiwan, so there was no way for us to miss it. From behind the overcrowded FuLong train station, last stop for us to buy water and food to carry on the walk, a 5-km concrete road led us to the actual entrance of the trail. Had we known about it earlier, we would have saved about an hour’s completely uninteresting walk and spared liters of body sweat by driving our motorbikes there, although the path was quite steep at some points!

A stunning view as reward! 

Once on the actual trail, there is honestly not much to be amazed by… until you reach the viewing platform. From a relatively shady and rather touristy path, we beat the few hundred meters paved with stairs and reached that absolutely breathtaking roost from which we enjoyed one of our first great views of the Ocean and on Turtle Island (or GuiShan Island, 龜山島) that we kept in sight until we left YiLan County (宜蘭縣). Up there, the weather was cloudy and windy, but the sun was shining heavily in lower altitudes, giving the well-drawn coastline a heavenly look. From there, a way up made of stairs is closed due to bad weather and risks of landslides but it must be worth it to take it if possible and admire the awe-inspiring views it gives. We caught a woman taking furtive pictures of us and started a conversation with her daughter (she could speak English), who clarified that her parents were studying photography and they thought the daring colors of our respective shirts matched perfectly with the scenery!

TianGong Temple

There is a way down to DaLi (大里) and the TianGong Temple (天公廟) but we had to go back to FuLong to get our motorbikes – that might be the only time of the trip when the bikes felt like a burden to us. From FuLong, we drove 25 km along the coast, once again filling our minds with spectacular views upon the Pacific Ocean to the left and the mountains on the right-hand side. You can’t miss the temple, as it is absolutely huge, colorful, and noisy during daytime! Our 2007 edition of Lonely Planet mentioned this site as offering accommodation in exchange for a free donation, so we started looking for people to help us and actually visited the temple on this quest. The temple’s atmosphere is rather weird to us foreigners, at times quiet and spiritual and suddenly loud, heavy and Disney Land-like!

The night descends upon TianGong

Around 5:30pm, we were gratified with a loud five-minute fireworks/firecrackers show (or ceremony) to end up asking a man in a pink polo shirt, who seemingly worked at the temple, for a place to stay overnight. He quickly led us to a rather basic room (although equipped with A/C) with huge beds made of four wooden shelves. At busiest times, around 10 people could probably fit into this room, but we were lucky enough to be alone in the room that night and spread several blankets to make the wood a bit softer to our tired backs.

There isn’t much to do in DaLi at night, so we grabbed beers and snacks at the nearby local convenience store and enjoyed them quietly, facing the Ocean and the full moon that reflected on it, sometimes interrupted by a High Speed train (高鐵) driving by.

At 9:30pm, after eating up our instant noodles on the temple’s terrace, it was time for us to go to bed, hoping the night would be better than the previous one!

Taiwan Trip - Day 1 (20/07/2013)

Here we go for our two-week trip around the island of Taiwan! 環島旅行 (“huan dao luxing” – literally, “island round-trip”) as the locals commonly call it. After a good night sleep, we packed early in the morning, had a quick breakfast and made our goodbyes to Louis’ flatmates. His local flatmate studied our planned itinerary and seemed to praise it, which comforted us in our choices. And comfort we were desperately seeking! As we got our bikes the evening before, we were feeling much unconfident. These were no large bikes (150cc) but it was our first shot at handling both gears and clutch. We had some experience with bikes in South-East Asia but still needed much effort and training the evening before to get used to them – at least feel capable of surviving Taipei streets. That we did.

Louis getting ready for the big show!

There was actually a tremendous gap between the night before and the next morning in our confidence level. Handling more or less the mechanics, we headed south-east of New Taipei: Showtime! Though Taiwanese probably are one of the nicest people on Earth, they looked much less nice once upon their scooters. Gee! Getting out of the city was a real struggle as traffic was dense and finding our bearings took us approximately two hours. We stopped several times trying to figure out our way, in a hellish atmosphere filled with fumes, honks, lights, weird driving rules (more on that later) and an obviously crazily hot temperature.

Paper lantern at Pingxi

We finally managed to get on the road we wanted (quite by chance) and headed towards Pingxi (平溪). Note that we were avoiding freeways, only driving upon ‘national roads’ limited to 40 or 60 km/h as this was the maximum speed our old bikes could endure (which is already more than enough to feel the speed, trust us!). Pingxi is about 60 kms east of Taipei and is famous for its paper lantern festival taking place in February (more precisely during the first month of the lunar calendar) every year. We actually stopped at Jingtong station (菁桐站), which is the last stop of an old and small (now touristy) rail line. The old street was packed with Asian and local tourists, especially when the small train arrived. We bought some delicious dumplings and crusty chicken chunks and took some rest. A couple of lanterns were ignited and flew before our eyes. Though really close to Taipei, we already felt like adventurers escaping the urban, packed, relentless world!

Wishes at Pingxi

We hit the road again, still heading east. We wanted to stop at the Sandiaoling waterfall (三貂嶺瀑布) but missed the trail. We didn’t have much time though so we continued, enjoying the road that was already – and unexpectedly – scenic and hilly. It also seemed like a bunch of temples were along the road as we noticed many ostentatious entrance portals. In the end of the afternoon, we reached our final destination for the day: Fulong beach (福隆海水浴場) on the northeast coast, which is kind of a local Saint-Tropez. The seaside resort was packed with youngsters and families as there was the most famous rock music festival of the island taking place during the week-end (it had been delayed for one week due to the Sulik typhoon that hit the coast). Quite worried about not finding a place to sleep, we went to the information centre where a Chinese/English mash conversation with the receptionist got us the attention of a Mainland Chinese tourist who helped us and accompanied us to the campsite we spotted along the road upon arrival. Luckily they had spots left at only NTD650 for two people (about €17), including a tent.

Fulong Rock Festival

After having refreshed and put up the tent on our wooden platform, we headed to the festival set on the strip of sand that is Fulong beach. We were offered condoms at the entrance bridge and realised these were finger condoms (so-called “findoms”): that tells quite a lot about local youngsters’ early sex habits. Ingenious Taiwanese being ingenious, they had set up a night market before the stage made of food, beer and gadgets stalls. The bands performing were young indie/rock Taiwanese bands (the Taiwanese scene is actually much flourishing, the Chinese rock scene being almost exclusively Taiwanese) and the cheap beer helped us feel the ambiance quickly. Ingenious Taiwanese still being ingenious, the spectators had dug rabbit holes into the sand that allowed them to comfortably enjoy the show. After mimicking them for a while, we reached the front of the stage to join the standing-up crowd in which the only decently “active” people were the few other foreigners. The show ended at 10pm (it had been going on since 2pm); we looked for the second stage as we had heard there was another one but never found it so we went back strolling through the campsite and ended up eating a cup of noodles in the common area. That makes the end of our first day; we then got back into our tent and its hard-wooden floor with no mattresses – we told the campsite receptionist we didn’t need them: that was a mistake…