December 9th, 2009: Thanks to those Long Island Ice Teas the night before, I wasn't too bright eyed and bushy tailed the next morning. Anyway, I set off before noon and got a few hours in.
The beach at Fonggang
Kending Peninsula barely visible on the right
Views of the coast
Much of this part of the walk was along somewhat dingy towns that seem to have tried to cash in on tourism but failed. That was probably because the shops by the highway were all semi-industrial ones, like truck tire shops, that didn’t exactly blend with the whole holiday resort theme. In any case, there were lots of deserted buildings and decorative statuary of the sort that Zippy the Pinhead would love to talk to, if he came to Taiwan.
Fortunately, this kind of rubbishy development alternated with nice seaside villages.
Odd but beautiful driftwood covered temple
Old fishing boat that was probably dashed ashore in a typhoon
I had intended to make it all the way to Fangliao that day, but fell a bit short of my goal, ending up in the small highway town of Fangshan. Fangliao was just up the road, and would be part of my next walk. It also represented where the island fanned out from the mountains and the western plain started, which is really the oldest part of Taiwan, its heartland.
It would be an interesting place to start the next leg of my journey.
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.
I have put these two together in forward chronological order, because I think it makes more sense to read them this way. It was two consecutive days of walking, so this order captures that feeling better.
I arrived at Jaleshui, famous for its rock formations, around lunchtime on Monday, after the usual multi-modal transport thing. I got changed into my walking duds near the beach, then went to quickly check out the little surfer zone that has evolved near it, with cheap hotels, restaurants and surf shops.
Surfers in and out of the water
Back at the beach, I admired the fine view, but discovered that a deep river blocked progress. I’d been to this beach before, which has a river that flows up to it and often r drains under the sand, allowing people to walk uninterrupted along the beach. But it had been raining had a few days before, and water levels were high. So, I made my way back to the road, crossed over the highway bridge, and then found a small track running back to the beach. At the beach, I saw a stranded ship on the rocks at Jaleshui. It was the Colombo Queen, an oil tanker. It was small for what you might normally think of as an oil tanker, but was not really a small ship, being about 497 tons in weight and about 60 meters long. It seems that wind and current often contrive to run ships aground in that area.Unfortunately, I could only see the ship when it was out of range of my camera.
She's not shy!
Groovy houses in Gangqian
Rotting dolphin
I continued on through a small town called Gangqian, which was interesting enough, and then followed the road until the beach was walkable again. In the distance, I could see the big radar ball at Longpan, and the cliffs below it. In the foreground, there was a lot of sand, sloping up to the road high above. On one beach I passed the rotting remains of a cetacean, some kind of dolphin or small whale, which was putrefying nicely, and had clouds of flies buzzing around it. Thankfully the wind was fresh and I didn’t smell it.
Sandy slope
Curious cattle
Cow country!
Below the big radar ball there is a moderately steep slope covered largely in spiky succulents, interspersed with grass and mud. The tough plants in the area are probably the only things that can survive the cattle that range freely on the slope. These buffalo type cattle are not hard to find, and evidence of them is impossible to miss: muddy trails with hoof marks and huge cow pies!
I kept close to the coast at first, as it had a well-worn trail, and passed two small groups of cattle: one, a group of juveniles, and then later, a smaller group of adults. The juveniles were nervous but seemed very curious about me. The adults just wanted to be left alone.
After about 20 minutes by the seaside in cow land, the coast-hugging trail became impassable, and I had to climb upslope in hope of a better route. Sometimes it was easy, but at other times very frustrating. But I did learn one basic rule: follow the cow tracks! The beasts had penetrated the entire area so it was by following their network of routes through the thick and prickly vegetation that progress could be made. The only problem was that the cows were bigger, lower, and thicker-skinned than I am, so sometimes the way forward was not that comfortable.
In any case, an hour or so of determined slogging through this prickly plant and cow shit labyrinth brought me tired, sweaty and a bit bloodied out to the other side!
Cows have been here
Cow pies and mushrooms
The radar station at Longpan
Trails in cow land
A bright local fruit
Not such a great trail for people
Old stone hut
Colorful church
God's soccer ball
The southernmost point in Taiwan
I passed an abandoned building, and came to a beautiful small bay. The sun was approaching the horizon, so I didn’t linger, but followed a small track uphill, coming eventually to a small aboriginal village, with brightly painted buildings. I went through this to the main road, and then kept walking towards Erluanbi. Soon I was there, and took a small forest road to the island’s southernmost point. Along it, I saw some crabs, one of which showed an interesting defensive feature. When he saw me, he took a fallen leaf – which matched his color perfectly – in one claw and put it over himself, hiding very effectively. He did this in less than half a second, a very fast and deft move - too fast to capture with my camera! I stared at him and he moved off into the forest, seemingly aware that I had not lost sight of him, despite his camouflage.
At the southern tip, all was serene: lovely coral rock stretching to the ocean, cool blue post-sunset sky, a nice breeze, a lively ocean. I walked back to the road, and decided to hoof it to Kending. It was dark but I followed the ocean where I could. One beach had amazingly bright white sand, which made seeing very easy, even well after sunset! Then a fish port, then Sail Rock, and eventually Kending! The beer at Smokey Joe’s was nice and cold.
Getting the morning catch ready for the market
The beach at Fonggang
Kending Peninsula barely visible on the right
Views of the coast
Fortunately, this kind of rubbishy development alternated with nice seaside villages.
Odd but beautiful driftwood covered temple
Old fishing boat that was probably dashed ashore in a typhoon
