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