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| From our marvellous campsite of the past 2 days we took small roads on the southern Kenting region of Taiwan; this was finally really wonderful cycling! Here a view over a nice beach - however, with a very special detail in the back: a nuclear plant! It's a bit weird to have this combination so close together it seems. And to add to the contrast, a few wind turbines. It seems as if they have been put there to ease the conscience... |
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| And with such nice sea scenery, coffee breaks become even more appealing! |
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| We took it easy this day, with several stops on the way to admire the scenery, take short walks to some viewpoints, and like here: to visit the southernmost point of Taiwan. One of those must-do's... |
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| A Japanese couple spontaneously offered to take a picture of the 2 of us, at the southernmost point |
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| Scenery along the coast |
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| Longpan park along the same wonderful road, with spectacular scenery. This is probably the first stretch of WOW cycling we had in Taiwan! |
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| Easy to understand why: spectacular scenery, good and nearly empty road, perfect weather, and no hurry! What a wonderful day! |
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| Enjoying to the fullest |
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| Wherever we went, wherever we looked, just WOW |
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| We stayed in a small fishing village a bit further up the coast - can't even find a name of the place - in a comfortable, attractive, super friendly and affordable B&B called Lugo Hotel Take a look at how these boats have been built (you see it best in the back); the hull is made of tubes, like a raft almost |
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| Evening walk |
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| The wild beach; you can spot some surfers in the waves if you try hard enough |
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| From this sleepy fishing village our trip continued over small and beautiful roads, with quite a few WOW moments - and a lot of climbs... |
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| But then when you get these views, all the climbing effort is totally worth it and quickly forgotten |
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| Bear with me; there will be many more such "on the road" views in this post! |
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| A rest stop on the way, back at the coastal road for a little while before getting into the hills again for the next climb; notice the big sand dunes in the distance |
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| This is the perfect cycling environment! Just a slight headwind, nothing to complain about. |
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| Oh. Yes. |
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| View during a much needed lunch break; after this we would climb for another 20-ish km, up to nearly 500m high again, and the body was asking for some more fuel. |
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| That lunch was indeed down there... |
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| All smiles! |
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| In this far south of Taiwan there are a lot of indigenous people, and you can see ample signs of this: statues, paintings, or like here a well done railing. The green area is an important wetland area, which also belongs to the indigenous people. |
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| Gentle uphill and just enjoying every single minute of it! |
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| Towards the end of the climb the views became a bit more dramatic and there seemed to be some rain in the air. |
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| We reached the highest point of this climb, nearly 500m high, and took a quick break at a cycling rest stop - and it indeed started to drizzle a bit. In these rest stops you can fill up on water, use the public toilets, etc. This is certainly well done! Notice also here the indigenous paintings. |
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| OK, we've reached the (much bigger) road 9; better go north after having been at the southernmost point... From here starts a winding 12km downhill ride! |
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| After around 80km and 800m climbing in total, we've descended back again to the coast, after a fast but slightly wet downhill. Somebody has been constructing this coastal reinforcement very carefully and orderly! |
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| Unfortunately, it also meant we got back to a busy 4-lane road |
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| We stayed at a small, very friendly homestay in Dawu, after a good 84km ride. This had been 2 really fantastic cycling days! Finally! |
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| Today, day 3 of this episode, we rode from Dawu to Taitung, and did around 64 km with quite a few climbs along the coast, totalling around 500m elevation. Beautiful scenery and a good road, but definitely busy, smelly and noisy again unfortunately. I guess that is just part of cycling in Taiwan then... |
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| Uphill... |
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| The view from above is impressive though! |
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| While having lunch, this truck stopped right in front of us, with 2 big bundles of... sausages! |
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| Taitung is not a big city like all the others on the west coast. Up until the last km we hardly noticed we were entering a city! |
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| This is perfect cycling! |
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| OK, this is a special one. What's so special about it, you'd say... Well... We used to have another cycling "computer" which got stolen in Vietnam last year. Up until then, we had done around 18300km on our bikes. Back in KL we immediately bought a new speedometer, and now we have 1700km again. This means: in total we have done 20.000km on our Santos bicycles now!!! |
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| Enjoying good food and nice ambience on the Taitung night market; after a good 2 weeks on the bike and with quite a lot of climbs in the past days, I'm like continuously hungry now... |
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| The last thing we would have expected in a place like this... Choices, choices!... |