Taiwan Trip: Day 6 (25/07/2013)

Thrills on cross-island highway n° 60

As usual, we woke up around 6:30am. The homestay lady prepared our breakfast composed of 4 Chinese dishes: tofu, (kind of) dried meat bits, unknown veggies and fried eggs. Our stomachs could only bare the latter so we literally escaped the food hall when the woman was away. Shame on us! We still feel sorry for her… After leaving the homestay, we stopped at a 7/11 in YuLi (玉裡) to complete our breakfast. We then continued on Highway 9 heading towards FuLi and quickly reached the cross-island highway n° 60. The cross-island road revealed much easier and even more scenic than its sibling from the previous day. Turns along mountain faces were long and large, cars were seldom and the altitude gave us splendid views on the Pacific Ocean.

Plain nature = pure freedom!

Our descent led us to the coastal Highway 11 again. By the time we joined it, the sunshine was already fierce upon us. Although the wind created by our speed made us feel fresh and comfy, every short stop reminded us this was mere illusion. We thus used every last bit of our sunscreen bottle to avoid ending like barbecued chipolatas. The strength of the panorama vivid colors, our feeling of complete freedom and the sharp contrast between the beautiful light-blue Pacific Ocean and the deep green mountains when descending Highway 11 gave us another round of tremors; can you ever get used to it? We stopped at a very touristy spot where you can see a small water stream running up a ridge. It seems the water is flowing upwards but we still question the natural cause of this oddity. The venue is packed with tour buses and you can easily give it a miss.

Lovely colors composing the Pacific Ocean

From Taidong to TaiMaLi

We then reached TaiDong (台東), the biggest city in the south-east. You can take boats to Green Island (綠島) and LanYu Island (蘭嶼島) from there. Although these islands are said to be worth it, we couldn’t afford them due to our lack of time. We got our bikes checked in a garage by a young mechanic, who also gave us directions to the nearest Pizza Hut where we had lunch (we couldn’t miss their buy-one-get-one-free offer!). We strolled a bit around and bought a new sunscreen at a nearby Carrefour (家樂福); the French supermarket successfully settled on the island about 20 years ago thanks to a joint-venture with the powerful Taiwanese food-processing company Presicarre. Although there isn’t much to do in TaiDong, it seemed like a restful seaside city. 

Descending on TaiMaLi...

We continued south upon Highways 9 and 11 and stopped at TaiMaLi beach (太麻里海灘) which features a 20km-long stretch of grey sand. Swimming is not allowed there as in many other places due to strong waves but we found a remote area with only two fishermen for company that offered a postal card-like landscape. We then reached DaWu (大武) and DaRen (大仁) in the late afternoon and hesitated to stop there for the night. As our goal for the next day was KenDing, at the southern tip of Taiwan, we however decided to go on despite the rain and blackening sky.

The grey sand beach was quite rocky!

We thus drove until the end of Highway 9 that crosses the island from east to west for about 30kms. Though soaked, dirty and weary when we arrived in the small town of FongGang (楓港), we were quite proud to have made it that far under such conditions. All in all, we swallowed 230kms during the day, which would remain the longest distance crossed in one day. We asked some locals for a hotel and eventually found a very decent one along the main road. Not that hungry, we bought a few snacks in the inevitable 7/11 and joined our room to enjoy the bathtub and free wifi. It didn’t take us long to settle for the night as tiredness got the better of us.

Longest distance crossed on day 6: 230kms!

Taiwan Trip: Day 5 (24/07/2013)

Beautiful Chang Chun Temple

It slowly but surely became a habit of ours, we woke up that morning at 6:30am, to be greeted by the morning coolness of the altitude hostel we were staying at in the Taroko National Park (太魯閣國家公園). Staying at the hostel at the same time as us were 3 British guys, majoring in geology back in Europe and on a research trip in the Taroko Park. How we wished we could have stayed there for a longer time, getting to know every single curiosity of this magnificent area!

By 7:20am, we left the guesthouse for good and stopped by the Chang Chun Temple (長春祠) to take a few pictures, laughing at ourselves for acting like no one but a Japanese tour group visiting Paris!

Breathtaking views from Highway 11

What would be a day in Taiwan without a snack at a 7-Eleven? Probably nothing! So we had our breakfast as soon as we came out of the Park after roughly 20kms. One more beauty of 7-Eleven is the toilet, which is really missed now that we’re back in Europe. Clean, spacious and air-conditioned, it was priceless after the last 2 days we spent in the rather basic Catholic Youth Hostel!

The 'Blue-Green' Highway 11

With TaiDong (TaiTung, 台東市) as a final goal for the day, we started off at 9am and headed to RuiSui (瑞穗) and YuLi (玉里) as intermediary checkpoints on the way. As usual, things didn’t work out quite as planned and it all began by driving around HuaLian trying to find a way out, eventually helped by a nice hotel warden thanks to whom we managed to get on the coastal Highway 11.

Overtaking the Tropic of Cancer

From HuaLian to DaGangKou (大港口), views were breathtaking and the way had a smell of France’s Côte d’Azur, magnified by the fact that there were really few people on the road. Once in DaGangKou, we rode the 5 extra kms to have a look at the “Cancer Tropic Marker” to take a picture of our first time crossing it on concrete surface. We were expecting it to be quite exotic and authentic…the disappointment was huge when we reached the highly touristy spot where dozens of Mainland Chinese buses were parked, while their occupants took pictures of basically everything there was to be seen, from the marker itself to, among others, the Ocean, toilet, fake aboriginal market and music band.

Crossing the island is challenging!

Back in DaGangKou, we (surprisingly enough) found cross-island Road 64 quite easily and got on it for 20 more kms linking the coast with the next inner city crossed by Highway 9, RuiSui. Although 20kms might seem like a short distance when put in perspective with what we had accomplished thus far, driving there revealed grueling because of sharp turns every 30-50 meters and a few cars overcoming us carelessly. However demanding it was, we both enjoyed riding our motorbikes there and felt like competing in a rally race!

On the road again, again...

Roughly one hour later, we arrived in the suffocating and seemingly uninteresting RuiSui where we – shame on us – took a big bite of the city’s local atmosphere… in a Family Mart (all the stools at the neighboring 7-Eleven were occupied by Taiwanese youngsters traveling around the island on their scooters, who had overcome us earlier), where we had a well-deserved lunch, washed our hands behind the counter (something I had never dared to ask and do after spending 6 months in Taiwan) and spread sunscreen on our sunburns using a mirror in the store. It feels quite sad to say it, but very often throughout our trip (and my stay in Taiwan) convenience stores were the best shelters there was to be found in both the urban and rural jungles. Having a bad hangover? Find a convenience store nearby, take a seat, read the news, have a snack/coffee and enjoy the A/C and the relative silence…close your eyes, forget about time, you’ll wake up fresh and ready to resume your day.

Rusty Hot Springs at RuiSui

We then found our way to what RuiSui is best known for, its hot springs, instead of going rafting like we had planned (the last rafts had left around 1pm). 4kms away from the center, we dipped ourselves into rust-colored hot water pools, outdoors and up on a hill, alone in the resort – probably deserted because of the hot season, this point being proved by the amount of dead leaves floating in the pools. From that experience, we learned three main lessons: (1) sunburns and hot spring don’t match; (2) a rusty pool might leave your swim trunks rusty; (3) it isn’t nice to have someone blowing away the leaves with a loud and smelly engine while you’re trying to have some rest. After all, for NT150, this good hour away from civilization was a decent and worthy way to spend our money and time, especially compared to the relative lack of interest of RuiSui!

View from our Hostel

Relaxed and nearly “high” because of the hot spring, we headed 20kms more on Highway 9 to YuLi, our final destination for the day. A man waved at us along the road and we decided to stop by and see what he had to offer: a room in a homestay with two large beds, private bathroom, A/C and breakfast for NT800 in total… What else?! The landlord was extremely nice and helpful (we used the family’s washing machine for free) and his wife served us some of the best NiuRouMian (牛肉麵 , beef noodles) we ever had in Taiwan! A few beers and shower later, we were ready to sleep in our large and decently comfy beds.

[At that time of the trip, we started realizing our plans had been too ambitious and we should cut down on the number of places we wanted to go to. The first place to be regretfully taken off the list was LüDao (綠島, Green Island) because of the amount of time it would have taken us to get there and the impossibility for us to bring the bikes on a boat. Plus, our meters had by then passed 500km (since Taipei) and our bikes didn’t look as healthy as they used to at first.]

We drove about 180kms on day 5