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.