Bicycle touring Taiwan: Heren to Chishang via Taroko Gorge

This week (our second) was better than our first week in Taiwan. We hadn’t fully got away from the traffic, but it was getting better, and of course we visited Taroko Gorge. Two friends had told me that Taroko Gorge was their favorite outing in all of Taiwan. I concur.

This man (below) was one of many people who we met who was walking around Taiwan. Uff, it seems like that would involve lots of walking along busy highways. I can think of better places to walk. Indeed we met one guy from Malaysia who had walked three different Camino de Santiago routes before choosing to walk around Taiwan. The man below, however, is a 64-year-old Taiwanese who had cycled around the island twice before. He knew what he was getting into.

This section of coast (north of Taroko) certainly has some nice coastal views.

In Chongde we had a tasty lunch and tried something none of us had ever had before — snails.

They were kind of chewy and without much flavor. Later a Frenchman assured us we must try escargot de Bourgogne, a real treat apparently. Snails certainly weren’t the only unusual thing we tried in Taiwan. Stocking up for dinner at a veggie truck one afternoon I bought a bag of kimchi. Wow, that was chewy. Well, it wasn’t cabbage at all — pickled (?) chicken feet skin. None of us wanted to eat that again. And yet a day or two later confused by our translation app we ordered a whole dish of chicken feet skin. Oops.

Another unusual dish that people talk about in Taiwan is stinky tofu. We tried it two or three times. It does sometimes seem to smell (and taste) like a dead animal.

Reminds one of the Kemaliyeliler Taş Yolu perhaps?

Accommodation in Taiwan is overpriced. Low end hotels cost more than in Japan and certainly aren’t as good. Campgrounds aren’t much cheaper. We were stunned by the price when we went to stay at our first paid campground. What a surprise then that in Taroko Gorge, one of Taiwan’s major tourist draws, the Heliu Campground was free! There were even hot showers. The hostel a couple kms further up the gorge wants US$90 for a room, and the nearby hotel is over twice that. Go figure.

We ended up spending three nights at the campground and were very happy to have Jason and Daby as neighbors. They generously shared their stove with us. We hadn’t brought enough fuel for ours.

On our first day we walked the Lüshui Wenshan Trail.

A Taiwanese couple, also hiking the trail that day, shared their chewy black packaged eggs with us. Turns out these are a popular snack in Taiwan. Wikipedia’s entry in English calls them iron egg. Later we had a super tasty version at a restaurant:

That couple was also staying at the campground and brought us normal boiled eggs every day for the rest of our stay.

The nearby town where there are restaurants, a relatively poorly stocked 7-11, and the aforementioned accommodation is called Tianxiang. Just above town Xiangde Temple is worth visiting.

The next day was a rain/rest day. However, our campsite was down at 400m, and the road climbs from there (very slowly) to 2400m. I couldn’t resist. I went in and out of clouds with light rain. I pushed on through harder rain hoping I might pop out of the clouds again, but it was not to be. The climbing had been incredibly slow. The average grade was only about 4%. It took me three hours to get up to 1600m. I bundled up and turned around.

In Tianxiang they advertise “ethnic” food. It looks like this:

Back down through the gorge and back out to the coast.

I remember reading something about how to solve the vehicle battery charging problem — in the future you’ll just remove the batteries, put them into a charger, pull charged batteries from the charger, and away you go. Well, the future is in Taiwan:

The black squares are empty, waiting for drained batteries. You somehow do some magic with the screen at the top. It must tell you which batteries to take (the green handles) and away you go!

A few kms south of Haulien was the only free side-of-the-bike-path campsite that we found in Taiwan. In the morning a woman seemed a little surprised that no one had come by and kicked us out (??!!).

This day a brilliant tailwind pushed us all the way south to the scenic area at Shitiping.

We’re getting south. Check it out — coconuts,

the Tropic of Cancer,

and banana trees (though really there are banana tress in northern Taiwan as well).

It’s amazing the feasts that can come out of little restaurants like this one:

We left the coast at Ningbu and started climbing to the west in light rain. A tunnel brought us into the East Rift Valley where it was kind of cold and raining hard. With a little luck (and a bit of money) we spent a comfortable night at the Japanese-style Antong Hot Spring Hotel.

We enjoyed the pools again the next day while it was raining and didn’t leave the hotel until about 2pm.

On the way south to Chishang we started to get into the rice field scenery that the East Rift Valley is known for.