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| From our homestay near Puli we took some small roads up the mountains towards the Sun Moon Lake. It was definitely beautiful, and some of the best scenery we've had so far, but it was also tough! Some of the hills were simply too steep to ride, at least parts of it. |
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| Then again, after pushing and puffing for a little while, this is the reward. Free view. |
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| And more view. The start of a short and nice downhill - unfortunately to be met with a brutal uphill again afterwards. Painful if you know this in advance: yay we're going down - but ouch we'll have to push it all up again... |
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| View over the valley, with some agriculture and a lot of the areca palms |
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| At the Sun Moon Lake, after quite a long and slow uphill morning, we took a wonderful coffee break. The picture shows what I forgot to write about before... The first campsite we stayed at, near the lake, we were welcomed by many small insects. Initially we thought they were just small innocent flies. After a while we started to worry that these "flies" were actually biting, as some of them seemed to have blood in it when you smashed them. Sure enough, these were not innocent flies, they were "biting midges", a real pest. So once we realised, we covered up, but the result of those visitors days ago is still visible (and very itchy!) |
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| View over the Sun Moon Lake, with rain clouds coming in. We were lucky and got out before the rain started. The Sun Moon Lake itself, although famous and one of the "must see" places in Taiwan, did not impress us much. Too touristy, too many boats, ugly developments... Well yes, typically the thing that not well managed tourism does to beautiful places. |
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| Admittedly, the cycling route along the lake is not too bad. It was not always well signposted unfortunately. |
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| Except... at some point, you get this: steep uphills with stairs to push your bike up. Maybe a walk in the park with a light bike, but no fun at all with a 40kg loaded tourbike! And this was not the only stretch, it went on for several 100 meters... |
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| A beautifully decorated tunnel once we left the lake bikeway. It was downhill from here, probably for around 15km or so. Getting up there costs hours of sweat and effort, going down is great fun - and done in mere minutes... |
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| After the downhill we still found some beautiful small roads to cycle on. Lots of small scale fruit farming: dragonfruit on this picture, but also papaya, banana, pineapple, guava, ... |
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| Cycling the way we like it. Until here it had been a really nice day of cycling, the best one we've had so far in Taiwan I guess, but that was about to change (see below) |
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| This pretty much marked the end of the pleasant part of the day. From here it was just dull, boring and rather ugly pedalling to get to a destination. We hadn't decided where to stay yet, just wanted to keep going as long as we could to get through this uninteresting part as soon as possible |
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| Luckily we still found a little rest area to take a break |
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| Across the rest area we saw this field; this is a taro paddy field. This is probably the best view of the entire last 30km. |
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| This picture sums up the last 30 or so km of cycling of a 90km day: busy roads (luckily sometimes with bike lanes), grey skies, and lots and lots (and lots and lots and lots etc) of traffic lights which seem to jump to red once cyclists come near |
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| After a great evening with good food, a nice beer (first one since Taipei) in a pleasant bar - very unexpected in this tiny town - and a good night, we were off again. Unfortunately the weather forecast was right: rain! So we got our poncho's out and headed into the wet weather |
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| Rain, busy roads, millions of (red) traffic lights, one big urban blob: some days you wonder why you are doing this. The west coast of Taiwan has not been very exciting, and this day (along cycling route No 1) was probably one of the most boring and uninspiring days we have ever cycled. We pushed on for 97km all the way to Tainan, where we planned to stay for a day to enjoy the city. |
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| Yes, just to avoid any doubt: a wet red light day |
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| Even a park we stopped at to take a break looked dull and ramshackle. This day just didn't want to work. |
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| Only the last 20-ish km to ride into Tainan were OK. It was mostly on a dedicated bike lane, here through a park and later on along a canal; not fantastic all the way but at least nicer and more pleasant cycling |
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| OK, now back to positive mode. While cycling through Tainan towards our guest house OC Hostel, we could already sense that Tainan was different. It definitely was/is! We went out in the evening for dinner, had a great dinner in a local street food restaurant recommended by our guest house owner and then very much enjoyed walking through the Tainan streets in the evening. This is a nice city with a great atmosphere! Temples everywhere, lots of activity going on, you can feel and often experience deep traditions, a lot of historical buildings, well laid out roads, beautiful little lanes with surprising cafes and restaurants popping up where you wouldn't expect them. Tainan: YES! |
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| Many small side lanes with no traffic, peaceful, "typical" |
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| Historical buildings around every corner; Tainan is Taiwan's old capital and therefore full of heritage. |
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| Inside the very well done, newly renovated Confucius temple, our favourite in Tainan |
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| Confucius Temple |
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| And what's happening inside the 5 Concubines Temple? |
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| Another street view |
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| People are enjoying the parks and temples on a nice sunny Sunday, and H&M is carefully watching over all of us |
And let's close with a short remark about something we've all heard more than enough about recently: the corona virus... How does this impact us? Does it at all? Well, I guess as a cyclist you don't get a lot into mass meetings; chances of getting infected are small, and on top of that we're very healthy... So the virus as such is not a major concern - touch wood. But we notice people are sometimes concerned about us: we're Europeans and according to the news currently, all Europeans have corona (or so it seems). So in the homestay for instance, the hosts were really worried to have us until they realised we did not travel to Taiwan from Europe. And still then, they kept a distance. Also elsewhere, in hotels and restaurants, you notice people are sometimes not at ease. So we'll see how that goes further.
Next to that, it might affect our further plans of course. Can we still travel to Japan in a few weeks, as we had in mind? Is it still wise to do so? Do we risk getting quarantined at some point - in Japan, or upon return in Malaysia afterwards? Will people become even more wary to host us? We'll have to see how it goes and adjust our plans accordingly, if needed...
