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!