Taiwan's Southern Cross-Island Highway: Day 2 - Laonong to Tianchih

On Monday morning I woke up in my tent at one end of the green-space inside the running track at LaoNong Elementary School.  I could hear talking, some laughter, and a lot of clapping.  While I started to pack away my things inside the tent, somebody turned on some lively modern dance music that mixed with the other sounds that I could hear.  Upon emerging from my tent I saw that at the other end of the running track a morning aerobics (dare I call it 'dancercize') class was in full swing.  I gave them a friendly wave to indicate that my sudden appearance didn't imply that they had woken me up.  It was good to see the old folks (one man looked particularly old) beginning their day in such an energetic way.

The young teachers I had chatted with on the previous evening had told me that I should move off the green-space before the students began arriving.  As I loaded up my bicycle and trundled over the highway to the local 7-Eleven I saw that there were already assorted girls and boys milling about with more students gradually trickling in from all directions.  I availed myself of the store's bicycle pump to inflate my tires; it really is hard not to be drawn to 7-Elevens for the wealth of conveniences that they concentrate in one small building.  I had been planning to eat some kind of breakfast food in the store as well but was thoroughly put off by the amount of attention I was already receiving from various young onlookers.  Had I purchased any foodstuffs and begun to eat in front of them, I felt sure that they would have broken out into a paroxysmal frenzy fueled by intense curiosity and so I left the packet of instant oatmeal on the shelf where it slouched and headed off towards Baolai.

As I rode I tried one of the bananas I had picked up the previous evening on a stroll around LaoNong.  I bought them from a stereotypical little old Taiwanese lady in a stereotypical little old Taiwanese general store.  When it came time to pay for my fruit she amazed me by picking up her abacus - HER ABACUS - and doing abacus things with it to produce a price.  I couldn't read the abacus, this skill having been phased out of the Western Australian educational curriculum fifty-or-so years ago, a little while before I existed, and so I had instead to rely on her interpretation.  The bananas were too far from being ripe anyway and joined the other agricultural detritus on the side of the road between LaoNong and Baolai.

Arriving in Baolai, looking across the river to the town.  Baolai was (and still is) yet another casualty of Typhoon Morakot.

In Baolai I found a Mei and Mei breakfast shop and helped myself to a big breakfast that would fuel my aspirations for the rest of the day: a fish burger, a tuna omelet, a soy milk, and a coffee.  Not being conspicuous enough to inspire a crowd of prepubescent onlookers, it was very soon time to move on.

This is as far as I had gone before.

Less than a minute after leaving the breakfast shop in the center of "downtown" Baolai I had reached the edge of the community and where I wanted to stop to appreciate the moment.  This was as far as I had been along highway 20.  Last time I was here I came with friends and we went white-water rafting down the river nearby.  In the sheds at the end of the highway we had been jostled by the throng of other rafters-to-be as we nabbed equipment in preparing ourselves for the excursion.  The whole place had been buzzing with an orderly chaos.  Now, as I looked at the sheds at the end of the highway, I could see signs of dereliction.  There hadn't been any white-water rafting here for a while, probably since Morakot.  Nonetheless, I was about to cycle onto an unfamiliar roadway and I felt that my adventure was only now about to begin.

My next big destination would be the Meishan Visitor Center situated just inside the boundary of Yushan National Park.  I discovered that the way there had been broken by Morakot and since repaired.  There were construction vehicles and construction projects and reconstruction projects underway at intervals along the highway.  I rode on a lot of new road although I didn't know if it was supposed to be a permanent or temporary route.

At the Meishan Visitor Center with Formosan Black Bears (taxidermified)

I arrived at the Meishan Visitor Centre after a long ride through a landscape that felt to me like a testament to the ultimate power of natural forces over all the schemes and devices of humankind.  My main priority in the visitor center was to establish exactly what kind of condition the SCIH was in.  Was there still a continuous route across to the other side of the island?  Was it open?  Were there still sources of food and water available along the way?  I had heard conflicting reports from people on my way here and I thought that the staff at the visitor center held out the best hope for an accurate assessment of the chances of success of my aim of cycling the SCIH.  I was dismayed when the girl working at the counter told me that the road was closed.  Closed?  But what did this mean?  When I pressed her for details she asked me to wait while she called for backup from somewhere upstairs.  Meanwhile, I wandered around the visitor center admiring the displays, reflecting on how few people would now be coming to see them.

The girl at the counter seemed to forget about me and after some time I approached her again to prompt her to call for somebody else.  This time her call for action brought a short middle-aged man trotting down the stairs, still wrangling with the buttons on his shirt.  This man told also told me that the road was closed.  When I seemed doubtful he took me to a free-standing noticeboard that displayed a rather official-looking notice.  He interpreted the notice for me - the road is closed - and pointed out the official seal of the Government of Kaohsiung County printed (or stamped?) across one corner of the notice in a wonderfully vibrant shade of red.  I was, by now, starting to think that the road was really closed.  I engaged the man about the specifics of the SCIH's condition and at some point during our conversation his attitude suddenly changed from "You cannot" to "Maybe you can try" after which we discussed the finer points of my proposed undertaking.

Upon leaving the center I asked Mr Visitor Center if I might pick a couple of the peaches from the trees growing outside the center.  Throwing profuse gratitudes at Mr Visitor Center and with my free fruit securely stowed in my backpack I headed up the hill into the somewhat unknown.  Around the first corner I came upon a roadblock consisting of two freestanding traffic barricades, the kind with diagonal black and yellow stripes.  After hesitating for fear of crossing some kind of boundary separating the legal from the illegal, I rode around them and onwards up the hill.  My first intended stop was a restaurant that Mr visitor center had told me was about twenty minutes along the road.  After about thirty minutes I couldn't see any signs of food or beverage provision and was beginning to suspect that Mr Visitor Center had confused 'minutes' with 'meters'.  A small blue truck, only the second vehicle that I had seen on the road (the first being a policeman who looked at me as he passed on his motorcycle, inspiring in me an anxiety attack because I thought he was going to get angry at me and tell me to turn around) appeared, coming from around the next bend, and when I stopped the driver he confirmed that the restaurant was indeed about twenty minutes behind me.  I cursed a bit and headed back down the hill to the restaurant twenty meters from the visitor center where I had started.

At the restaurant I ordered a big noodle soup and called Andrea to update her on my progress.  I thought that I had better call now as the availability of cellphone coverage in the mountains seemed so uncertain.  I bought another bottle of water before getting back on my bike and on the road.

The road was scarred and torn open in places.  Some stretches of the road way had been repaired with a mixture of dirt and rocks compacted to create a hard but rough surface.  My ride up into the mountains became a ride and walk up into the mountains as I hopped off my bicycle for the rough stretches and rode on the original smooth stretches.  Off.  Walk.  On.  Ride.  Off.  Walk.  On.  Ride.  Off.  Walk.  And so it went on.  There were not so many construction vehicles and no tourists at all and I couldn't help thinking that I was lucky to have the road all to myself, quiet and peaceful.  At one point I had to stop and wait while a grader operator moved rocks and dirt around on the way ahead until he saw me and allowed me to pass safely.  The damage here looked recent and as I trudged past the idling machine in my thin, yellow, plastic raincoat with a light rain falling everywhere around me, I wondered just how stable this landscape now was.

Somewhere between three and four o'clock in the afternoon things suddenly got foggy.  The clouds seemed to have descended on the mountains and visibility became quite bad in places.  The moment had taken on a surreal quality and I swam through the misty silence along the highway.  And then the silence withdrew as the air was filled with the sounds of a large truck and some other large vehicle and I pulled into the public carpark and restrooms at JhongJhihGuan.  It quickly became apparent that the construction workers were leaving, that the carpark no longer saw a lot of tourists, and that the restrooms were no longer connected to a water supply or power supply.  A signboard told me I was now at an elevation of 1,930 meters.  After a brief stop during which I considered the current state of things along highway 20 and let myself worry a bit about what I would find (or not find) up ahead, I pressed on, hoping to find a suitable place to put up my tent for the night.

I finally reached the police station at Tianchi and was relieved to find it open and occupied.  I was really glad to know that there were still people in the area, just in case the road collapsed under me while I was cycling and I was forced to drag myself, semi-conscious, up a ravine and seek assistance.  I chatted with the three policemen at the station and got some more water.  One of them was munching on a cob of corn and, now sure that I wasn't going to find any restaurants or shops open, I tried not to think about dinner.  The friendliest one of the bunch told me that the temperature would drop suddenly at nightfall.  He checked the thermometer inside the station and returned to tell me that it was currently 14 degrees centigrade.  I wondered what these men spent most of their time doing now that the highway was closed and they only had construction workers and monkeys to contend with.  When I asked them if I could pitch my tent next to the station they suggested that I try what I assumed was a campground about fifty meters down the road.  I expressed my gratitude for their warmth and welcome and moved on, my body temperature having dropped enough so that I had begun to shiver.

At an elevation of 2,280 meters I reached my home for the night: the abandoned public restrooms and carpark at the Tianchi trailhead. A pair of symmetrical stairways flanked by white railings climbed from the highway upwards and out of sight somewhere above.  On the other side of the road a small building housed the public restrooms, now abandoned, lacking electricity or running water.  The clouds wafted in and out of the area and promised rain soon.  I decided to set up my tent in the restrooms.

Abandoned public restrooms at the Tianchi trailhead.

Everything set up for a very quiet night.

I managed to anchor my tent pegs by directing them through the metal grates and into the wall of the ditch below the floor of the bathroom.  Before getting into my sleeping bag I walked back up the ramp to the carpark (at highway level) and tried one of the two peaches I had picked from the trees outside the visitor center.  I had no other food and only limited water.  I was a little disappointed to discover that the peach was only really ripe on one side and I was forced to throw away half of it.  It had begun to rain in a light yet drenching way and the sky was darkening.  As I lay in my sleeping bag inside the tent the silence was a little disquieting when combined with the thought that, in one of the most densely populated countries in the world, I was all by myself on an abandoned highway with only an unripe peach to look forward to for breakfast and I couldn't be sure that the road I was following would carry me over the mountains.  I was not going to sleep well.

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 I have mapped my entire route on the Bikemap website.  I've included some photos and comments along the route.  Go to www.bikemap.net/route/471071

Taiwan's Southern Cross-Island Highway: Days 4 and 5 - Taidong to Tainan

Breakfast in Taidong.

Days four and five were spent cycling from Taidong to Danlu and then from Danlu back to Tainan. I took the South-Link Highway back across the island. After the drama of crossing the central mountain ranges of Taiwan, my return journey makes for a rather anticlimactic tale. I woke up, packed up and prepared myself as usual, breakfasted in a small breakfast shop downstairs, and headed off along the main highway out of Taidong.

The start of lesser road number 199 is a good landmark on the South-Link Highway.

Things only really got interesting when I stopped in the aboriginal township of Danlu for the night. If travelling westwards across the South-Link Highway, Danlu can be found about two-thirds of the way to the western coast.

I asked my way to the township's elementary school and then set about finding someone to ask for permission to pitch my tent for the night. I found the music teacher in the middle of some kind of special class and she took time out from eating cake to talk to me. She was extremely welcoming (no surprise in Taiwan) and tried to dissuade me from camping on the school grass and make use of the school hallway instead. But I was resolute and, despite the palpable threat of rain, I set my tent up on the grass to the amusement of a group of local children. Everybody, including a random elderly lady walking down the street by the school, had some kind of snake-related warning for me. The school oval ran right into the side of the jungled hills and so I had no doubt about the prospect of snakes joining me during the night. There was also something about the way that they told me about the snakes, a kind of flat by-the-way-ness, that left me in no doubt that they sometimes had snakes come down to the school.

Camping on the school grounds of Danlu Elementary School.

While setting up for the night, I made friends with the local kids and when I asked them where I could find a restaurant they told me to follow them. We walked up the street a couple of blocks from the school and then turned left and stopped at a very nondescript building. It didn't show any signs of being the kind of place where dinner could be gotten but when I stepped inside my perceptions changed. Half of the small room was occupied by a cluttered kitchen while the other half contained a few tables and chairs. Various aboriginal knick-knacks decorated the walls. To my great relief and delight there was a menu hung up on the wall above the kitchen space, confirming that this was indeed a restaurant. A middle-aged woman was busying herself in the kitchen and I bothered her to ask about dinner. It turned out that she was closing up for the day so that she could make an appearance at the local church. With the help of the kids translating for me, we established that she would be happy to make up some kind of noodle dinner for me before closing. That sounded wonderful and so, after a short wait, I was presented with a plastic container full of noodles with meat and vegetables; a hearty meal at the end of a long day. The kids took me to what must have been their parent's or relative's shop and sat me down outside it so that I could eat my dinner. I was getting along quite well with them and my Chinese was really getting a workout. The two boys went away and returned suddenly with their Nintendo Gameboys and kept me company with their beeping, shooting, racing, and exploding. I kept up a conversation with a young girl of about seven years, doing my best to keep up my end of the conversation through a mouthful of noodles. She wasn't a great conversationalist and everything suddenly began to wear on me. The kids had to go home and I was left to finish my dinner and then return to my own home, temporary though it was. I read for a while before going to sleep, infused with a sense of satisfaction from adventures had and challenges overcome. It had been a good day.

I found this monster bug in the school bathrooms.  It was about eight centimeters long from the end of its tail to its mandibles.

The new light of the following day threw the zeitgeist of the previous evening into a skew. Things became very ordinary and a little disappointing. I packed up and started on my way to the restaurant I had been to for dinner. I hadn't gotten very far when I was caught by a woman from the shop I had eaten outside the night before and encouraged in for a drink. I shared a drink with a middle-aged woman and her aunt.  From what I could gather through a haze of half-understood Chinese, the aunt seemed to be keen on having children with me and attempted to charm me with her vision of how beautiful they would look with our combined features. I wasn't really in the mood for fostering an illegitimate love-child in a small aboriginal village in Taiwan and as things got progressively more awkward I made my excuses and left to find breakfast.

While at the restaurant on the previous night I had learned that she would be open again for breakfast and I intended to return in the morning to patronise her fine establishment. I also wanted to spend some money, having received my dinner for free. But things were different in the morning. She was busy and preoccupied with several other people who seemed to be sitting around more because they wanted to socialise and less because they needed to eat. I felt like a chore. I had some toast and some ice-tea, paid up, thanked her, and departed to the bemusement of the other patrons.

Upon leaving Danlu, I decided that it was a great place to visit but that I probably wouldn't want to live there.

On the west coast I headed inland and along the foothills up the 185.

In the middle of nowhere I came upon a gambling machine and video game graveyard.

Sega Rally was big in 1995.  I remember seeing it in the arcades.  Now it sits forlorn in the wilderness, slowly decomposing, like so many other memories from my childhood.

We may be impressed with a lot of what modern technology makes possible but when everything is finished it will all be swallowed up again by the forests.

The rest of my journey home was straightforward; a series of highways and roads that took me up along the foothills and then westwards back to Tainan. I suffered from a badly-worn tire and another puncture which slowed my progress considerably. Andrea rode her bicycle out to meet me and we rode the last leg home together.

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In hindsight I have come to see my journey over the mountains as something more significant than a simple bicycle tour. For me it was a personal challenge in which my supports were removed and then, at the end, I was forced to make a leap of faith into darkness and uncertainty without being able to see where I was going. Mountains come very naturally as a metaphor for challenges, be they personal, logistical, financial, spiritual, or otherwise. I will finish this post with an excerpt from an email I wrote to a friend not long after I finished this journey across the Southern Cross-Island Highway:

 I have realised in hindsight that it all felt like a big metaphor.  Andrea was there to support me at the start but the real work (climbing the mountain) was something I had to do by myself. There's just something about mountains and getting to the top.  It's such a common metaphor for any kind of big challenge.  You know, I guess it was like Heart of Darkness, wherein the journey took me further and further into the wilderness and away from humanity and civilization; the road was closed and after a while I didn't even see any construction workers.  It was just me and the broken road.  And I got focused on getting to the Yakou Tunnel at the top.  I knew that I just had to get up there and through the tunnel and then I would be okay because it was all downhill from there on.  The road got pretty bad.  At one point I had to take the rack off my bike and carry it across a recent landslide and then come back and carry my bike as well (too many big rocks).  I saw monkeys up there.  And it's funny how circumstances conspired to take away so much.  Although the road exists on maps, maps tell me nothing about the state or condition of the road and different people told me different things about it.  Some said it was open and some said it was closed so I was really heading into uncertainty.  And (partially) because of that I had to put my tent up in a bathroom near the top on the mountain when the clouds descended and visibility was severely reduced as night closed in and I hadn't brought any more food so I missed out on dinner and breakfast.  So it was funny the way that so many important things were stripped away from me so that if I was going to get over the mountains it was going to be with minimal support - no companions, no food, no way of knowing whether I would be able to go all the way over, no idea what lay ahead, no fresh water, no electricity, no phone reception.  And when I did finally make it to the Yakou Tunnel I was faced with one last challenge before being free of my predicament - the tunnel was unlit and pitch black and I realised that it was not being used because the road was closed and even the construction workers had no reason to go there.  I couldn't go back and so, like all good adventures, getting through to the other side required a leap of faith into the darkness without being able to see the other end.  I had a light on my bike and a head light but they didn't help much and there were all sorts of strange sounds being made by water inside the tunnel.  Of course, I did make it through and from then on the rest of the journey was just logistical, getting back to Tainan via the South-Link Highway down by Kending.  In hindsight I had been drawn to do what I did and I'm glad I did it.  It was just something I felt I had to do and it all has a strange sense of something intangible and special about it.

POST SCRIPT:  At the time of completing this series of posts the Southern Cross-Island Highway appears to be closed indefinitely although I have seen something on the net about it possibly re-opening next year.

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 I have mapped my entire route on the Bikemap website.  I've included some photos and comments along the route.  Go to www.bikemap.net/route/471071

Cycling around Taiwan: Prologue

Taiwan is an island. So is Australia. One day I'd like to ride all the way around Australia but right now I don't have the essential luxuries I need to attempt that. However, Taiwan is much smaller and cycling all the way around it is much cheaper and won't take six months. In fact, depending on how fast you are able to cycle (which in turn depends on things like your physical condition, the weather, what kind of bicycle you have and how much gear you need to take with you) you could cycle around Taiwan in as few as four days. You might be able to do it in fewer days but I don't know what the record is. However, most average people attempting this feat will probably take around 7-14 days.


It would be a terrible shame for someone who loves riding their bicycle (i.e., me) to have lived in Taiwan and not spent a long week just traveling around the country only as fast as their two legs carried them on two wheels. The island really does offer a diverse landscape of different terrains, climates, local specialty foods, cultures, and random encounters with its inhabitants. My desire became a reality in February and March of this year when I cycled with my two friends, John and Andrea, around the country. Our big break came with the Chinese New Year vacation of 2010. We were all freed from our employment obligations for two weeks; Good time in which to make the most of brakes, chains, gear levers, handlebars, pedals, spokes, tires, and saddles. We started out from our home base in the city of Tainan on the south-western coast on the 9th of February and started cycling anti-clockwise around the island. Unfortunately a series of three cold fronts was on the way and it was only a matter of time before their paths crossed with ours. After three days of wind and rain we were forced to abort our peregrination in Hsinchu, within one or two days of Tainan. We were despondent.


Almost one month later we were in Hsinchu again, setting off to complete our circumnavigation of Taiwan. We rode all through the night and into the morning until once again we were standing outside our apartment building having our photo taken by one of the security guards: A 'finished' photo to mate with our 'before' photo. The photo showed the three of us looking more or less the same as we had over five weeks earlier. What it failed to capture was how we had been enriched by our experiences: the people we had met, the time we friends had spent together, and all the beauty of this remarkable place that we had been steeped in.


This series of thirteen posts and the accompanying map at Bikemap.com describe our journey. We hope that it may inspire other ordinary people wanting to experience something extraordinary.

My friends on this journey:

The beautiful and very capable Andrea.

The dashing and charismatic John.

Me. That was a stupid idea.

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Links

• John has also blogged this trip although he has included edited video sequences on his page here.
• I have retraced our route and left remarks and photos on the Bikemap website here.
• I have written up some useful advice for anybody touring around Taiwan by bicycle. You can find that information on my page about cycling in Taiwan.

On the eve of the first day of the big ride, I do some last-minute packing in our living area.

Alishan, where you can kiss the clouds

Alishan was a place we had been interested in visiting for a long time but had never really gotten around to. The occasion of Erin's (Andrea's sister) stay with us mandated for getting up into the mountains. We live very close to the coast and so showing Erin the beach here was easy. But we couldn't let Erin leave the country without experiencing Taiwan at elevations greater than 100 metres above sea level, especially not when mountains are so central to the character of Taiwanese geography and at the heart of conceptions of Taiwan in general.

I've circled Alishan on the map above. To say that we went to Alishan is actually pretty vague and requires a bit of clarification. Alishan could refer to: A) The Alishan mountain range ("Alishan" in Chinese literally means "Ali Mountain"); B) The Alishan National Scenic Area, which is like a national park; or C) The township of Alishan. We caught a bus from Chiayi to Alishan township up in the mountains. The scenery on the way up was a wonderful reprieve from the flatness of Tainan.

And when we got to the top we found beautiful mountain vistas, cool fresh air, a different range of flora and fauna, and ... Starbucks. And a giant car park. Oh well, it wasn't a great surprise, just a disappointing inclusion within a beautiful setting.

We had booked our accommodation before we left Tainan and after a couple of queries we managed to locate our hotel down the hill from the main car park. Our room was fresh and light and didn't smell of stale cigarette smoke. Incredibly, the temperature was cool enough that we could lie under heavy quilts and feel very comfortable. Back in Tainan we would have been sleeping on top of our beds with the fan blowing on us all night. The temperature up here in the mountains had the effect of rapidly energizing us, or so I found.

We left our hotel room to do a bit of scouting about before the day's end but first we needed some nourishment, and what better place to find nutritious nourishment than the local 7-11. We consumed some nourishing drinks, pumpkin seeds, and baked snacks which fortified us against the demanding ramble that was to follow.

I think the wall upon which this mosaic resides is part of the wall that defines the boundary between the township and the National Scenic Area proper. We had passed through a checkpoint and paid an entry fee for the national park on the way up in the bus. Erin and Andrea could be sisters in this photo. I guess that's not as surprising as the implication that they might not be sisters in other photos.

We found our way to one of the two Giant Trees Trails within the park. These trails take the pedestrian sightseer through some magnificent stands of very tall trees, the cypress being notable among these. During the Japanese occupation of Taiwan from 1895-1945 the Japanese constructed a railway line from Chiayi up to the Alishan range to make logging of the cypress here feasible. Today the same railway line is famous as the Alishan Forest Railway, the red engine of which has become synonymous with Alishan and appears on all manner of related advertising and paraphernalia. The walk trail was fantastic. It was so refreshing to be among such tall trees and the air smelled of living things.

Erin and I stand in a shaft of sunlight that cuts its way through the blanket of shadow covering almost everything at ground level. This felt like a real forest.

On our walk-about we took a path through a grove of cherry blossoms and found this view of the clouds smothering the mountains at the end of the day. It was a beautiful evening, a world away from Tainan.

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The following morning we took the famous Alishan Forest Railway down the mountains to Chiayi. You pass through three climatic zones (some sources claim four zones) on the way down and there was a noticeable change in vegetation as the train descended. However, there was also a noticeable change in our opinion of the forest railway as we realised that it was quite loud, clunky, and not too comfortable. The whole journey from Alishan to Chiayi took some four hours (including the short hike from one rail line to another halfway down the mountain) and we were more than happy to alight at the end of the journey.

Inspiring views on the way down compensate for some of the discomfort of the old train.

The end of the line in Chiayi and relief for us all as we are able to experience the joy of walking again. You can see that famous engine behind us.

Our trip to Alishan really broke up our routines, both practical and psychological, and allowed us to exist in a very different space for a weekend. Andrea and I want to return to the area and hike the Fenqihu trail but there's no word yet on when the Forest Railway or the Fenqihu trail will reopen after being damaged by Typhoon Morakot.

A few links: Forestry Bureau site, really nice National Scenic Area site, the Wikipedia site.