30/12/10 Les Gorges de Taroko

Sur la côte est, outre l'incroyable bord de mer, notre premier véritable point d'intérêt porte sur les Gorges de Taroko près de Hualien. Le soir avant de s'aventurer dans les gorges, on rencontre Chocolate qui nous invite chez elle pour la nuit. L'hospitalité des Taiwanais est vraiment une chose incroyable. On repart le lendemain frais et dispos.

Les Gorges de Taroko sont des formations de marbre à travers lesquelles une rivière a fait son chemin. La route de 20 km qui suit la rivière est très impressionnante, comportant plusieurs tunnels et passages étroits bordés de falaises. Ils recommandent aux visiteurs de porter un casque à cause des risques d'éboulements. Nous, on a déjà des casques...

29/12/10 Are we going around Taiwan?

On Christmas day, we leave Shu Zen College and make our way up the central mountains. The road is tiny, steep but the scenery is just gorgeous. Large sections of the road have collapsed and almost every bridge we cross is under construction. Looks like they got a huge catastrophe. Could it be due to one of the several earthquakes that stroke the region recently?

Half way to the top, at about 1500 m high, after two days of biking, we are stopped by a huge construction site. We try to make our way through it but we are told by the locals that the road that crosses the mountains is under heavy constructions and closed for a month. We have no other choice than going back down the mountains. Since the beginning of our trip in Taiwan, people keep asking us if we are biking around Taiwan, which is fairly popular here, and we were saying no since we were planning to take that South Crossing-Highway. But at the end, we won't have any other choice than going South and making it around the island. That's what we call destiny...

Interesting rock formation on our way down. Note the trucks and backhoes working in the river. It is common see those kind of work in Taiwan river's during the dry season.

Taiwan grows an incredible quantity and variety of fruits on the flat lands surrounding the central mountains: bananas, pineapples, papayes, guavas, tomatoes, bell fruits, coco nuts, buddha heads, leeches, pears, prunes, oranges and more.

On that picture, you can see a kind of palm tree who produces bitternuts. Locals chew and spit that nut all day long and get addicted to it. The bad thing about it is that it is highly cancerogen which explains why Taiwan has one of the highest mouth cancer rate in the world. Everywhere you can see men with red, inflated lips and the cancer growing on their cheeks.

Shu Zen College

The Shu Zen College gave us a warm welcome. We really felt like home there. Students are curious and are willing to help us learning Chinese and reading the menu at the cafeteria. In order to give back to that community, we decided to do presentations to the students. Most of those students have never go outside of Taiwan so it was a big shock for them to hear that someone could actually bike around the world.

 Students even gave us Christmas gifts including nice letters, chocolates and really good pineapple cakes.

On the 21st of december, Taiwanese celebrate the shortest day in the year by making rice paste balls and baking them in a soup. Traditionally, everybody get one year older on this day instead of having each an individual birthday. That means for example that a baby born on the 20th will have one year already on its second day on Earth.

 Then, we walked through each floor of the dormitory. The students of each floor had decorated their floor and prepared a small performance for us. This is Christmas spirit like we don't see it in Canada.

Tonight is friday and most of the 5000 students have been taking the bus to go back home. On our side, we have decided to leave tomorrow and bike through the mountains and then along the East Coast, spend the new year in Taipei and finally take a boat in Keelung to Xiamen in China.

20/12/2010 LiouCiou Island

From Kaohsiung, we bike to Donggang which is the only port from where you can go to LiouCiou island.

A performance in the street theater. Looks like a Comedia Del Arte isn't it. 

After getting lost for a good hour in the street and the harbour of Donggang, we finally wfnd the ferry charter and get onbard. The sea is calm and there are fishing boats everywhere. Nice sunset.

Back on earth, after having seafood in a local restaurant, we reach the hotel where we are supposed to camp. There is no real camping spot so we just set our tent in front of the sea on the lawn. We spend the night drink beer and eating fruits confortably sitted on beach long chairs watching the sea.

What makes this island unique is the fact that it is entirely composed of coral. Wooden and stone walks zigzag between coral rocks and sometimes go through dark caves and later exit on the blue sea.

You have to be on this island to realize how steep is Taiwan. From there, the whole Taiwan looks like a single mountain.

Vase Rock, a coral block grinded by the sea to form this shape.

Most of the island shore's are made of rough coral formation that do not allow for swimming but seem to hide many kind of shellfishes.

Byebye Little LiouCiou Island!

50 km of biking later, we are back at Shu Zen College.

19/12/2010 Kaohsiung

For the weekend, we decided to go to Kaohsiung and to LiouCiou Island. As usually, the main streets that lead to the city are packed with scooters.

We arrived in Kaohsiung just on time to go to the night market. The Giant Shrimps, squids, oysters and fishes stalls confirm that we are in the seafood country. 

 Giant shrimps stall. You pick the shrimps you want alive in the aquarium and they will grill it for you. Can it be fresher than that? 

 Two of those delicious oysters omelettes that cost 50 NT (1.50$). Have you notice the red basket full of oysters.

 We keep seeing those things drying on boards all day long in the streets.

 Kaohsiung is a modern, clean, aesthetic and dynamic city that now attracts many tourists. Walking around the harbor and on the shores of the Love River is pleasant and relaxing. We walk and eat all evening and eventually go back to the hotel. We start the next day by visiting Cijin Island, the oldest part of Kaohsiung.  

On our way to catch the ferry, we can see the fishes catched during the night and now drying in the streets.

 In the ferry crowded with scooters

 View of Kaohsiung from the White lighthouse on Cijin Island.

 On the docks and causeways of Cijin, fishermans are everywhere, asleep on their cooler, the fishing pole standing on their scooter.

 View of Cijin

A delicious BBQ squid on its stick, a popular snack that you have to try.

17/12/2010 On trip with Shu Zen students

Hakka Museum with the English class

Day trip on our bikes into the Moonscape hills wih two teachers from Shu Zen including an ice cream stop at Cishan.

Phonguang Shan Temple

Hakka jewelry making and traditional meal