Road Trip Taiwan, Day Three, Part One

Day Three found us traversing one of the most amazing mountain roads in Taiwan, the Central Cross-Island Highway, and of course the world-famous Taroko Gorge, which is actually the first 15 miles or so of the CCIH. Much has been written about the Gorge and the Highway, so in order to save valuable cyberspace, I'll let my photos do the talkin' and others do the explainin' - here are a few links about the history and sights of the Taroko Gorge and the CCIH:

Taroko Gorge

Taroko National Park (the eastern part of the CCIH)

Story of the CCIH

More pix from the CCIH

This trip takes you from banana plantations by the Pacific all the way up to the highest mountain pass in East Asia (3275 meters) which is covered in snow from December to March, and back down to sea level, all in one day. Hence, I decided to split this day into two parts: the first features the Gorge and the ascent, the second the icy realms of the pass area.

The gate to Taroko Gorge

The Gorge

Out of the gorge, and into the hills

Things to remember

A different fauna and flora: this nasty-looking piece of work is a local nettle, Urtica thunbergiana, aka "Cat That Bites" in Chinese (咬人貓). It forms huge bushes with fat, dripping poison glands on the large leaves. Touching them will guarantee the end of your boredom for at least two solid days.

As to fauna, we saw a Formosan rock macaque staring at us at eye level from a roadside tree when we came out of one of those narrow tunnels. I guess he was less surprised than us, but decided to haul butt anyway, just in case. You never know with these strange, pale bignoses. I couldn't get a photo of him, but here's a specimen of another widespread simian species:

Above 2500 meters, we also saw a whole slew of alpine birds, the most interesting among those the Formosan whistling thrush and the White-whiskered (Formosan) Laughingthrush, both endemic to the island.


Part Two coming tomorrow!

Road Trip Taiwan, Day Two

Day Two:
The next day found us rolling along the Suao-Hualien Highway and marveling at its scenic wonders.

Just 15 years ago, this aptly named "Death Highway" used to be the most dangerous stretch of road in Taiwan - barely wide enough for two sedans, one-lane, pitch-dark tunnels, and packed from end to end with gravel trucks driven by suicidal, betelnut-crazed madmen with an codex of ethics that didn't permit them to decelerate below sixty miles an hour even in hairpin turns. All that with a 1000-foot drop into the ocean always looming just beyond the flimsy guard rail...

Today, the road is nice and wide, the tunnels have been widened and illuminated, and the Gravel Trucks from Hell seem to have found Jesus or something, so now one can actually concentrate on the fantastic coastline instead of constantly trying to dodge certain fiery death. This is how our friends at asia-planet put it:

"In addition to the Central Cross-Island Highway, another road that offers considerable attractions for the tourist is the old Suao-Hualien Highway. First opened to traffic in 1932, this 118-kilometer-long road was the first government-built road in the area, but its origins go back to 1874, when a road was first cut between Suao and Hualien under order of the imperial Chinese government. North along the road from Hualien is the Chungde Control. In the early stages of its development, the road could carry traffic in only one direction at a time, and vehicles had to wait at the control station for convoys going the opposite direction to pass. It rapidly developed into a spot where travelers would stop to enjoy the scenery, have a snack, and buy souvenirs. At the northern mouth of Chungde Tunnel, 182.5 kilometers along the Suao-Hualien Highway, is the Shiahai Trail. This is a perfect spot to view the Pacific Ocean. A walk of 10 minutes down the trail brings visitors to a shingle beach featuring limestone formations and a variety of rock-growing plants. The 20-kilometer stretch of highway between Chungde and Heping is the most tortuous and spectacular section of the Suao-Hualien Highway. Cliffs of gneiss and marble from sheer drops of more than a thousand meters, and the road winds its way precariously between the cliffs on one side and the ocean on the other. After this stretch, the road runs through to Heping and Guanyin, finally reaching Nanau and Dungau. In the vicinity of Nanau, the Wushr Promontory protrudes majestically into the Pacific Ocean, dividing the Suao-Hualien coastline into the Nanau and Dungau bays. Dungau is a major producer of lilies; moreover, the Japan Current brings this coastal area a rich annual harvest of fish."

Now for the pix!

This mighty dragon saw us off in Suao.

Sights from the highway.

Closer to Hualien, the cliffs drop straight into the ocean, continuing their vertical line up to 800 meters below the surface, allowing whales, dolphins and other large ocean dwellers to get close to the coast. Consequently, Hualien boasts one of the two only dedicated whale watching piers in the world. If you're in the Hualien area between May and September, make sure to take part in a whale-watching trip.

A few shots from the other side of the road

Sunken Mitsubishi. Poor sailor...

Protect your forest! Call us at these easy-to-remember numbers! Read with a Taiwanese accent, the Chinese characters below the numbers sound like the digits above them and make sense at the same time, e.g. 930 reads like "save mountains and forest", and 057 sounds like "Bureau of Forestry".

Sign at a college campus in Hualien

Aboriginal art

Hualien is one of the world's largest marble producers, and the airport the only one on the planet made mostly from this mineral. This fine piece of marble architecture can be found downtown.

Look for Day Three tomorrow!

Road Trip Taiwan, Day One

I’m back from our Four Day Six Hundred Mile Easter Holiday Company Outing Island Road Trip that took us from banana and pineapple plantations by the Pacific shore across an ice-covered 11.500 foot pass (Hehuanshan) where we played with snowmen and then drove on to return back to the tropics proper five hours
later. This is definitely my favorite route around the northern half of the island: Stranded blowfish shoals! Roadside monkeys! Breakfast banana cake! Cloud forests! Bearded firs! Towering cliffs! Stone rhinos! And - of course - more! (did I mention steamed lobster with wasabi?)

Here’s my report, for those of y'all who didn’t fit in the car:

Day One:
Starting in Taipei County and ending in Suao/Nanfangao, the road led us east along the northern coastline with its picturesque fishing villages, rocky outcrops, endless pebble beaches and a nuclear power plant or two.

This rare specimen of a Taiwanese Pebble-Gobbling Rhino dwells right outside Shimen.

Sweet potatoes - nowhere better than in Sanchih County! (Also double as large-bore artillery shells)

Bisha Harbor, one of the largest seafood markets on the island.

Coastline

Japanese fin de siècle gold processing plant outside of Jiufen
At Fulong Beach, we were treated to the eerie sight of dozens of beached porcupine pufferfish. No other species of fish was present, only the porcupines. A quick investigation into the matter revealed that they must have been pulled
out by anglers (the Taiwanese are completely crazy about seafood) and thrown back in because they're not exactly convenient to prepare for the dinner table.

Alas, that did't keep this intrepid blogger from getting a quick protein fix. Maybe he should have read up on the genus Diodon first: When inflated they pose a major difficulty to their predators: a large diodon fully inflated can choke a shark to death.

One creature's trash is another one's lifeboat.
No place in Taiwan is further than 45 miles away from the ocean, as the crow flies, and seafood's a way of life. This was our dinner that day, in a harbor restaurant at Nanfangao.


Day 2 Report coming tomorrow!

20 Ways The World Could End

And there you were, thinking the worst that could happen to you is a rogue truck kissing you on the way to work. Well, think again. I wasn't aware of half of those possibilities. So, what's your favorite? Me, I like the roving black hole..and of course, number 20!

Quotes and Durians

Want to kill a few weeks' worth of time? Well, look no further than Wikiquote!

As an aperitif, I suggest you move straight on to what A. R. Wallace's contemporaries had to say about his odes on Durians:

The durian — neither Wallace or Darwin agreed on it.
Darwin said 'may your worst enemies be forced to feed on it.'
Wallace cried 'it's delicious.'
Darwin replied 'I'm suspicious,
For the flavour is scented
Like papaya fermented
After a fruit-eating bat has pee'd on it.

After that, you're on our own. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Damn the torpedoes - I love SciFi!

“Sci-fi can be succinctly defined as speculation, whether based on established scientific facts or on logical pseudo-facts consistent with the framework of the fiction in question, involving smelly green pimply aliens furiously raping or eating, or both, beautiful naked bare-breasted chicks, covering them in slime, red, oozing, living slime, dribbling from every horrific orifice, squeezing out between bulbous pulpy lips onto the sensuous velvety skin of the writhing sweating slave-girls, their bodies cut and bruised by knotted whips brandished by giant blond vast-biceped androids called Simon, and written in the Gothic mode.“

Peter Nicholls, True Rat 7, 1976