This is the third and final installment of our holiday blog…the others are posted below.We thought we’d been rather resourceful and had brought along some cereal and two bowls and spoons for our breakfasts in the morning. The “typical” Taiwanese breakfast is not overly appealing, but we’d been spoilt with some Western style breakfasts till now, although the aboriginals told us definitely, no breakfast”, so we got some milk and coffees from the 7/11 and had a good meal. Luckily for us as the day ended up being a very long drive of many discoveries and not much time to eat!
Our guide book had given some very general indications of places to check for surf, so we set off early from Taitung in search of them and more. The 60 km north of Taitung is rumoured to have Taiwan’s best surf, most spots closely guarded secrets of the Taitung ex-pat surfers. Someone forgot to tell the authors of the rough guide to Taiwan however, and they hinted at a few spots and gave directions to others. The wind had turned offshore early, but we managed to find dozens of spots, the best of which (including the left hand point in one photo above) were not mentioned in any book…in fact we nearly drove straight past a few, but something caught the corner of my eye. Suffice to say that the results of this search are in a slide show at this link, or on pointyhat. One of the spots was the curiously named “Eight Immortals (or ‘Fairies’) Cave, a spot which was opposite a quite well known attraction on the mid east coast. Caves high on the cliff tops, which were originally at sea level, had the remains of eight ancient people discovered in them, hence the name. The point opposite, however is top quality and virtually unknown. Unfortunately, due to the power of the groundswell, my legrope snapped after just a handful of waves and my board got damaged on the rocks on the point…lucky for me it was right at the end of the surfing part of the trip! By the end of this day, I had not only surfed (with just one other person, new friend Jandré from Ilan) a most superb left hand point break, but had “discovered” many, many more, all of which had not a soul in sight! This was extremely exciting for me, but less so for Cassy, so we headed towards the east coast town of Hualien and Taroko Gorge beyond.
Eventually, after a long day driving and surfing and getting extremely excited (me!) about new surf spots, we arrived at the turn off to the acclaimed taroko Gorge area. Most visitors to Taiwan have this firmly penciled in their itineraries and many people we know have described its beauty. One person we know who has left Taiwan after a long stint teaching here and never had a good word to say about anything in Taiwan, grudgingly admitted to me once that Taroko Gorge was “actually quite beautiful”. This faint praise was enough for me to know that it must be absolutely awesome, and so it proved to be.
As we drove up the gorge, the first thing that shocked us was the road. A bit like the Genolan Caves road, but on crack, as the road narrows to just one narrow lane on numerous occasions, huge tourist busses thunder along both ways and the road drops away on a teetering precipice on every turn, of which there are scores. I survived the 16km trip to Tiansheng, the small town that caters to most of the tourists’ accommodation needs, with my heart in my mouth and palpitating wildly, but we arrived safely! We decided to treat ourselves a couple of nights at the grandest option in the gorge, the rather opulent Grand Formosa. Our room overlooked the gorge with gushing torrents flowing over the marble river beds at frightening velocity just below our huge floor to ceiling viewing window…it was the only entertainment we needed! As both dinner and breakfast were supplied we knew that we’d need to plan some healthy hiking for the next day, which we did. After a very satisfactory buffet style dinner, we worked out what we’d try to see the next day.
After another stultifying large meal at breakfast, we definitely needed to hike and hike we did! It was an absolutely glorious day, and even though it was technically winter time and the sun struggled to reach some sections of the gorge as it was so deep, we managed with just jeans and t shirts and strong shoes. We walked the tunnel of nine turns, which provided an amazing snapshot of all the gorge had to offer. Turbulent waters continue to scythe their way through this spectacular marble gore as they have done for millennia. The towering cliffs are dizzying to view as they rise almost vertically from the waters gushing below, past our spot some 50 meters up and continue to soar almost endlessly into the sky: and this goes on for more than 50 km inland! We marveled at the engineering brains of the occupying Japanese army and the courage and feats of the builders, the Truku forced labourers after whose tribe the gorge was named. Typically marble striped boulders as big as semi trailers are strewn along the river bed, testimony to the ferocity of the floodwaters at times, and marble, basalt and other forms of rock form crazy striated patterns as the cliffs rise above.
Our second hike tested every reserve of my ability to fight my fear of heights as we trekked along tiny paths high in the gorge with ridiculously flimsy (in my mind anyway!)fences to stop any plummet into the gorge below. It was adrenaline inducing, exciting and frightening as well as quite exhausting all in one. After some recovery time down the bottom (partly enforced by me flattening the battery of the car by leaving the lights on and seeking “jumper lead” assistance from a bemused, but mercifully accommodating Chinese tourist!) we set off to drive to even higher and more dangerous levels of the gorge via the cross-island highway. As the road passed increasingly darker tunnels, narrower passes and various landslips and waterfalls across the road, even Cassy’s bravery was tested! Suffice to say that I’d come rather close to soiling my pants on the way up and we hadn’t covered even a quarter of the road nor had we reached the highest point! I was pleased to hear Cassy suggest we turn back, and we ended up having a restful hour or two over coffee and cake at the hotel before embarking on yet another mountain climb this time closer to the hotel in the early evening. After an electrifying and surprisingly entertaining aboriginal dance show that evening and more sightseeing of the gorge the following morning our holiday was drawing to a close. Not to be out done the equally jaw dropping sight of the Cingshuie cliffs provided more adrenalin rushes on the drive home (see photo above). The road just frantically gripped onto the cliff face as trucks rumbled along and frightened foreign drivers tried not to look over the edge too much!
You can probably tell how wonderful we consider this holiday by the overly verbose triple installment of blog to discuss it! Seriously though, we have been quite stunned, charmed, surprised and delighted by this adopted home of ours: it is truly “the beautiful isle” as the Dutch named Formosa all those years ago…our only regret is waiting so long to explore it!