Days 44 and 45: Nanwan to Houwan

Starting point: Nanwan (South Bay), Kending National Park

Day 44, October 3rd, 2009: Nanwan to Hobihu Fishport

This was a real stubbie of a walk. I would never have considered going all the way down island for a piddling two hours. However, I was on the way to Chishan to join the wife and her family for the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, and I didn’t have much time. So a stubbie it had to be!

Longruan Lake

It was a simple affair, walking along Naguang Road away from Highway 26 near Nanwan onto the Maobitou peninsula. This is the smaller, western peninsula that tourists often miss when they go to Kending. Once away from the road, all the urban sprawl of Hengchun and Nanwan quickly disappeared, and an open landscape with grass, trees, bushes and gently rolling hills surrounded me. There is a shallow, reed-banked medium-sized lake, Longruan, and of course the massive wind turbines next to the Third Nuclear Power Station popping up over the skyline.

Although less developed than the main Kending area, there were still lots of tourist buses, and seafood restaurants to serve them. There was also a Sisal Industry Museum. The sisal plant is a form of agave, whose fibers are used to make rope, special paper, dartboards etc. It likes to grow in hot, dry, sunny places, and southern Pingdong certainly qualifies.

Sisal 101

Outside the sisal place was a tour bus and a crowd of tourists, quite possibly from Mainland China, based on their faces and hairstyles. One middle-aged guy was eyeballing me big time. (What was he seeing? A ludicrous swaggering freak with huge nose, arrogant eyes, and a monkey beard? A riveting action-figure, who threatened his own meager self-image? I don’t know, but he was transfixed.) I wasn’t on stage, so I stopped and stared back. He mocked my actions by copying every gesture I made, so I started asking him in Chinese what the hell he was looking at! This worked and he focused his attention elsewhere. Another trivial victory in the ongoing quixotic war to assert my normality!

Ep off, eh?

Tribute to Pingdong's musical tradition in Daguang

After a bit more walking, I passed through the sleepy town of Daguang and then on to Hobihu, which has lovely views of Nanwan and the mountains of Kending. I gorged on delicious seafood, and then went off to Chishan for a huge barbecue.

Nanwan and Kending hills seen from afar on a windy day


Hobihu Fishport

Slabs ' o ' Grouper

The main building at Hobihu Marina

Day 45: October 18th, 2009. Nanwan to Houwan (Back Bay)

I got an early start, and arrived at Hobihu Marina around 9:30, changed into my walking duds and then took some time to explore the marina and the beach on its far side. By the time I finished that, the restaurants were open so I went in to eat. One resto which had seemed super popular last time I was at the port wasn’t very busy, as it was so early, so I thought I’d try it. I sat down (the boss seeming a bit dismayed that there was only me!) and was soon presented with a menu card. It had prices like 200, 300, 400 etc and its format suggested it was for a set meals, i.e. soup, rice, a couple of small seafood dishes and some greens. I asked the guy how much for one person, and he said 200NT. I told him I was hungry and asked for the 300NT item. He looked amazed. Ten minutes later I found out why! The menu wasn’t for set meals, it was for sashimi plates! I had just ordered sashimi for two, at a restaurant that was probably so popular because of the cheap, generous sashimi portions! What I was brought was an absolute mass of sashimi. Even had it been cooked fish, it would have been a lot. In terms of choking it all down, it was basically the raw fish equivalent of a Texas style 32-oz steak (900g). It was probably actually only about 500g, but that’s lots of raw fish!

I choked 90% of it back and that was it. The stuff started to taste and feel disgusting in my mouth. I’m not a massive sashimi fan to start with. For the next few hours I had burps that I could easily imagine a cat smelling from 100 meters away! Fortunately, there were no ill effects beyond that.

A windy day by the beach

Boats and reactors

It was an amazingly good day for walking: warm and sunny, but not overly hot or humid. There was a strong breeze, typical of that area, which made the ocean lively and interesting. I walked along to the cliffs at Maobitou, taking occasional paths down to the seacoast, which was composed of razor-sharp fossilized coral rock.

Just past the cooling water outlet for the nuclear power plant, there was a small bay where groups of Taiwanese (they were so geared up it looked like they were preparing for a commando mission) flailed around on the surface of the water 10 meters from shore in a rather lame version of snorkeling.

Navy S.E.A.L.s? SBS frogmen? No! Taiwanese snorkelers!

Runoff for 3rd Nuclear Power Station cooling water

Up the hill on the road I went, taking occasional side trails down to the see for a look, then the main Maobitou tourist area. On the far side of the Maobitou parking lot, I took a trail that connected to a farm road that also served as access to a small radar station. From the farm road, I took a small trail down to a coconut plantation, which a local guy told me connected to the white, sandy bay called Baishawan (not the one on the north coast, obviously). The coconut plantation and rocky coast was lovely, funky tropical stuff. After a short time I came to Baishawan, which is a golden band of beach between two sections of coral rock. It was bedecked with umbrellas and alive with tourists, but still a bit quieter than the main Kending beaches. After this, I followed the road as the beach rock was so sharp and uneven that going over it for any length of time would be very slow and actually dangerous.

Views from Maobitou


Casualty of the typhoon

The wooded hills between Walilong and Back Bay were really lovely, especially as they caught the late afternoon sunlight. Approaching Back Bay, I got a big surprise when I saw an oil tanker, the “W-O Budmo”, aground about ten meters offshore! The ship had been pushed onto the rocks by the strong winds and waves of Typhoon Morakot, a few weeks earlier


One good thing about the West Coast of Taiwan are the sunsets

On the other side of the bay was the impressive-looking National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium (NMMBA), which was my official end-of-route progress point for this day. I had sore feet and a long trip home in front of me. Such are the rewards of the traveler.

National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium