Its getting close to this....

Trevor Says: After verbally exploding at the mormon creeps this morning during my run, I realized that I needed some quiet time. Its been a long laundry list of events that have led to this...not falling down, though. Not yet. I think my camel can take one or two more pieces of straw.
Bike defaced, not getting paid, my contract being broken / changed / broken / ignored/broken again, bike computer stolen, employer who coudnlt give a horses arse about me, kicked out of our home (landlord sold it with a friendly "sorry...you move now?") and a list that I dont have time to lay out here.

...one step closer to the edge.

:)

A Healthy Heaping Helping of Heping...

...and make it to Heping we did.



But, extruded-jesus peanut butter flapjacks, batman, what a show. What a frolic with the beasts of the road it was to survive the tunnels of the cliff section. Through tunnels fit for 1.5 vehicles, we aimed to fit three. Monster gravel trucks that take up more than their share of the road at irrational speeds ("green giants", herein) and tour buses and scooters and cars and us - all squeezed onto a road unfit for all, especially all at once. It was, seldom, fun in the tunnels but we made it there and back via the expedient Taiwan train system to Hualien.

Alive, tanned and totally pumped and rewarded by the views and the loneliness of the road made for a wonderful trip. Well, the non-tunnel sections that is. Weaving in and out of tunnels along the way, we met with 'the perfect ride' stages and 'horrid ride' stages. Where the road left the interior of the mountains and hugged the cliff, pirouetted down the river valleys and climbed back up, the way was perfectly perfect - 'the perfect ride'. A hard ride, astounding views north and south (and up and down the cliff face) but the road was often empty, and we had solitude for the most part. Until the next tunnel....the traffic always seemd to crowd us in those damned tunnels!! The tunnels, aged carvings out of the mountainsides, built for vehicles in the 50's now shunt vehicles without remorse. This, the tunnel portion(s) is 'the horrid ride'. I guess there is a viable reason why bikes are not allowed....but, c'mon.....everything is not allowed in Taiwan, so we took this with a grain of salt. Should have taken it with a dose of reality.

Ah well....it all started so innocently.

Us at a lookout along the coastal highway, appraching the main Chingshui cliff section.

We left home prepared for camping along the coast in Heping so, loaded with our tent, stove, sleeping bags, food, water and all the required fare for a night on the beach we set off early in the morning. I had just replaced my bike computer (a giant, and I mean significantly larger than the universe 'giant' F-you! to the f***er who stole my first one....I really mean it) and we were both eager to test out more distances, and have the pleasure of knowing the details of the ride. Small pleasure, but in a scientific way it is a nice 'measure' of our pleasure!



Anywho, we set out, hit the road and weaved our way through Hualien city to the outskirts of town where the bananas grow, the tubers are for sale on the side of the road and the world turns slowly from cosmopolitan city with a rough edge into one from generations past. Stopping for a break, and to buy some bananas from the side of the road, we felt good. The day was beaming with clear skies and sunshine. .

Us. Me eating banana.

Excited to get past the turn off that would take us to new territory, and the famed ChingShui Cliffs, we dared not doddle. A quick banana break (and, yes, we stopped at a 7-11 for a drink, nothing like some 7-11 O-J to kick start a ride!) and we were off to the races (by races I mean a slow plod...).

Crystal on the road, before the turnoff to new ground. On the right, straight to Taroko, a previous bike trip, and right to those three towns (of which Heping is a small village in the middle...between Chongde and Nan-ao).

The Chingshui cliff section is the impenetrable geological fortress that made east coast habitation and development so arduous in years past. They have since been solved by tunnels and amazingly cut roads into the side of the mountain. Engineered precisely to look like it simply couldnt work...yet it does. The road exists and offers stunning views. Recently more tunnels have been added as landslides, typhoons and rockfall continuously plagued the original road. Those old cliff-hugging roads still exist, in part, but the main route through the ChingShui cliff is almost 1/2 through tunnel now. We tried to take the old road at most points, but to no avail - they were bad at times, but at most other times they just were not there! Washed away by the whip of time and the force of nature. Other times they were so strewn with rockfall that to bike them would be nothing short of torture for our tires and give us flats. I dont like flats. I really, really dont like flats. So, we stayed mostly to the main road and that meant going through the tunnels. With the most massive entities that Taiwan can put on the road. More later.

These are from two separate rivers that both are famous for producing the rose stones. On the left there are two small figures in the middle of the river that are searching, and on the right a close up of what I can only imagine to be a father and son inspecting a certain rock. Is it a rose stone?

We stopped for lunch on the Taroko bridge, sat in the sun and watched the river below. Below us, an father and son scanned the vast river plain and the gushing river itself, vacating the mountains above it of the left over water from the recent typhoon, searching for rose stones. A search that can bring in good money, but the odds are so stacked against you. Them. Post typhoon pickings can be good for these cobble to boulder sized trophies, and if a family can grab a few, clean them and polish them and sell them in the market they can get good money (and the buyer gets a beautiful, sometimes stunningly life-like pictures within them of nature, trees, valleys....). As we tucked away our lunches and headed back to the road, a father an son traced the river looking for a single rock that might get them some money.

Lunch! Crystal showing off our regular biking fare and the both of us trying to take a self portrait but messing it up....three times in a row. So, we get to post the best of the worst.

Back on the road, we made it along the upward climb (yes, unlike those dastardly downhill climbs....) and approached what we had been eagerly anticipating - the ChingShui Cliffs.

Crystal approaching as a Green Giant blasts its way past us and into the first tunnel. If only we knew here what we were about to encounter in those bastard tunnels!

Long story short(er) - Taiwan is an island, but really nothing more than a mountain chain that rises out of the ocean. I can't guess at how much lies below the ocean surface, but from the ocean it goes upwards of 4000masl at the highest points and averages around 3000masl for the remainder of the mightiest mountains. It really is a set of mountains plunked into the ocean....driven up from its depths, more aptly said. The transition from flat ground (think Calgary) to the foothills (think Cochrane and outer Canmore) to the lofty heights of the tallest peaks (take your pick...Yoho, Jasper, Banff, endless places untraveled within Canada and the world) is not typical here. Well, it is I suppose, but it all happens under the water. What would be foothills are submerged. What you get on the island itself, the part that is above water is simply the ocean lapping up beside the side of a towering mountain chain. So, it is like sea level is halfway up the mountain. Well, it is exactly that. And this means that you go from ocean surface to cliff in many places, with no slow transition. There are some places that have developed a slight terrace, but not here.

Rubble road, on the left, epic views on the right. The left picture is one of the decomissioned roads that are, at best, impassable. On foot it would be a suitable road to take, but on a bike...no chance. Unless we had a plow in front of us!

At the ChingShui cliff section of Taiwan, it is a flat ocean on the east to almost 80 - 90 degree cliff face of Taiwan, petering out in other places to perhaps 60 degree angles as you go north or south of the main cliff section. Basically, its steep.

Geologically awesome, for sure, but the Taiwanese had to get a road through here. Where we now ponder the limitlessness of nature and time, people once had to walk by foor to get from north to south. So they had to build. Well, the Japanese did a lot of it whilst they occupied before and during the second world war. They were burdened by needs of the people, and the needs of moving their army south to "control the natives" as they so proudly, at the time, announced. What they accomplished is rather remarkable, a swerving network of tunnels, cliff hugging roadways and erosion control barriers. It is a remarkable sight - one that our pictures will do absolutely no justice to. The technological limitations of the time required that most of the road was built mostly by digging into the side of the cliff enough so that people could walk along it. Then it developed into a more traversable route as the road got larger (dug deeper into the side of the mountain) and through time it just kept, piece by piece, increasing in efficiency. Now, the Taiwanese government - due to very realistic issues of landslides, rockfalls, the cliff crumbling from underneath the road, and the damage by typhoons - has started to make tunnels for the most dangerous parts. This is a total necessity for transportation and safety, but an utter loss of picturesque scenery. So, while a large portion of the cliff road is not within tunnels, a large portion is still out of tunnels and hugging precarious cliffs, while the old road remains and is passable (on bike or foot) at times.

More scenic views of our cliffy sojourn. On the left is the stretched out section of the old road, which is where I stand, on the right, giving scale to some of the rocks that fill the now-defunct road.

The ride itself was rather smooth, the scenery awesome and the heat killer and the general mood of the road very welcoming. But....as mentioned earlier....the tunnels. Those bastards. Each time we had to enter a tunnel (each one politely stating that bikes were not allowed) it became a fight with time, trucks and green-giants from hell.

We would try to time it so that any traffic driving our way was past us, wait for a break, then charge our way into the tunnel hoping to make it to the other end before we had to be passed from behind. Never quite worked out. We were forced to walk sections, stop biking and cringe up to the side to let the green giants pass and dodge oncoming cars that were passing buses (yes, in Taiwan it is accepted as 'safe' to pass at high speed inside a tunnel, on a curve....freaks!).

The tunnels were hell. Each time we would exit, we would recalibrate....take a drink and prepare for the next. Then the next. Then the next. Some were pleasantly short.....two were dauntingly long. They just kept going! But, alas, we finally made it through the last tunnel and were safe and had all our body parts and were able to hit the road in normal riding mode. The green giants still passed us, but it no longer mattered. They had the whole road to work with, not a 2 car width dark tunnel.

Crystal walks among the rubble on one of the closed sections of the old road. Left to nature, this particular stetch probably doesnt have much time left. To the left of this picture is a precarious drop into the ocean, to the right as you can somewhat make out the rest of the cliff face.

Forced to pretend we cant read, once again, we try to take the now closed cliff section of the road to avoid yet another tunnel. However, around the bend on the left picture is a dead end. Crystal, on the right, displays our feelings...one more tunnel.

The Chingshui Cliffs, looking north on the right and looking south on the right.

Trevor on the left, pushing north as we leave the mostly tunnel section and break back out into the clear glorious cliffside road. Along the way we passed the stoic battle against the powers of nature in action. Here workers clamber about on the cliff face to build erosion walls, drill netting and supports for concrete along sections that are prone to rockfalls. All this effort is continuous....every season, evey year, people work to hold back nature for just one more day. Then the typhoons, the rains, the winds, the earthquakes and the regular battering from the ocean take their toll. Then they start again.

We made it to Heping in rather good time, found a small shop to grab some water and rested. Then to the train station, deciding that we didn't want to bike that route back again (it was gorgeous...so bloody gorgeous....but dangerous....so bloody dangerous) and that there was no way we could get a train home and camp. Or, better said, there was no way we could camp there the night and get a train home the next day. It was camp and bike back or take a train now and call it a day trip. Train it was. Bikes on the train, us on the seats, the fatigue set in. Zonked! We were zonked! Back to Hualien station, off the train and biked our way back to our apartment.

Mail box, Taiwan style.

Arrived in, almost, Heping. The village proper was another km or so down the road but this is what we needed. A place to stop, water, and a friendly reminder from the shop owner that rain was coming. Later on we came to this sight, which can only be described as the best fate any Karaoke bars can come to - being closed. This place will no longer have to hear the wretched sounds of Taiwanese singing, ever again. What a lucky building!

This trip left us in a really festive mood as this was a trip - a section of road - that we really wanted to bike for a long time. Such a rich history, such a demonic thrill to traverese.

Festive that we did it, congratulatory that we succeeded, but ever so glad that we were done with the tunnels.

And the green giants. Those beasts of the road.

Homeward bound...

Tomorrow to Heping....

...if the weather allows. Along the coast, through the most cliffy section of Taiwan - ChingShui - and along a totally new stretch of road for us. But that is tomorrow. Hours away.

Tonight we took it upon ourselves to force our way through a barbeque, roasting the most delicious mushrooms money can buy (yes, the only ones they sold....perhaps not so special), and sipping at the fountain of the Taiwan Beer. Then peanuts and a game of darts. Apparently (despite having the better form in throwing) I suck. :)

Now we sit at home, bikes readied and bags packed for tomorrow, listening to two cats fight over territory on the roof of our neighbours. It makes a good show, for sure. I was just about to go grab a nice video of the pair taunting each other with the most unfathomable bellows of cat-calls, but Crystal informed me that our equally perceptive (annoyed?) neighbour had just then taken a hose to them to make them move. Now the fight rages on, the coos and the cries and the howls echo through the alley...but the darkenss hides the music makers. So, no video. Just a story. Think of two cats, centimetres away from each other, nose to nose, howling and screeching endlessly. The evolutionary battle rages....

Tomorrow....the cliffs of Chingshui await us. How shall we fare.....how shall we fare.....

Happy Birthday To You (and a Typhoon)

[Update upon an update of a comment: Finally battled my way through posting these. So, here are the missing five of our tea treking, typhoon avoiding weekend in Taipei.]

Crystal awaiting our pizza....our real, live, actually authentic pizza. Most "pizza" in Asia would be best described as wonder bread with ketchup and cheap, perhaps fake, cheese and a few chunks of uncooked green pepper. What we stumbled upon here, in Taipei of course, was the real deal! On the right...friend we met along the way as we hiked up to the temple (below).

Taipei from a distance on the left, one of the many temples that dot the landscape in this region. At least the Daoist and Buddhist temples have the pleasantry to make their places of worship attractive, unlike the architectural swill of the christian houses. Despite the mythology of worship and the irrationality of spending so much on a building to burn incense and talk to a pretend friend in the sky in, it makes for a colourful addition to the landscape.

Trevor, trying to find the end of the noodles. The impossible feat attempted and failed, the only option left was to bury ones face in mid stream of the noodles and chew your way through to make your own end. Pleasant to watch, I assure you!

Happy Birthday Crystal!!

[Comment for y'all: There are a few more pictures that we hoped to post but, on three separate computers, they would not load. Sometimes this happens and I simply dont have the time to keep fighting with it. These are a taste of our tea time in Taipei, if I can manage to upload the rest I will do so and link to it later on. Nothing absolutely phenomenal is missing, I do say!]

This weekend was planned to be an adventure into tea growing country to the south-east of Taipei city. We had planned a general area to hit up, a general itinerary and a gran plan for hiking through the fields and the backwoods of this somewhat forgotten region of Taiwan. A birthday romp in the tea leaves of future cups of tea.



What we didn't plan, or really expect with any certainty, was a typhoon. We knew of it (see previous post) but as things have gone throughout this typhoon season we figured that, perhaps, we may be ok. However.....

Friday train to Taipei, managed to break our way in (somewhat legally) to our hostel, dropped our gear and headed out to the night. A weakly translated set of directions to a cabbie took us to a place with real pizza, rather real bruschetta and a nice dark beer. Pleasure of the senses!!

A break along the way up. Lunch in our bellies, we hit the backroads and trails to get us up the hill to the upper tea growing area. The sky was clear, the typhoon still but a foggy consideration in the future...our minds were on tea and tea alone! On the right is an old forgotten abode in a forgotten part of Taiwan, one which nature took ahold of and cloaked in vegetation. The trail wanders off to the right of this picture and then into tea country.
Saturday we hit the road for MaoKung, a nice tea growing region of Taiwan. The idea was to take the gondola ride into the heart of it, take the trails that started there and meander our way through the tea fields and tea houses. However, as the typhoon was on its way the gondola was halted. Stopped. Dead. Not moving.

So we walked there. Somewhat there. We basically spent the day most among the tea fields and villages and back paths....with a map that would have been more effective as a mop than an actual direction finder or location finder. It was rather horrid, but we managed. Sort of! We ended up not where we intended to go, but where we enjoyed being. So that is all that matters. After a day of walking, a lunch of the coolest (and most filling!!!) noodles and a nice tea house visit we surrendered to the day and took a bus back to the city (apparently the bus driver thought our noses were beautiful, and explain it to us in Chinese and Taiwanese....repeatedly! Fun conversation, though...).

What to do with a map that is useless....keep on trying. When it is your only hope....keep trying...look for clues.....keep on, keep on'ing!

So many tea houses, so many types of tea, and no clue how to get to any of them!! Ok, we could get to most of them, but to be there and find that spot on the map....almost impossible. Worst map ever. On the right, a watchful eye snarls at us as we take refuge from the rain under an awning in front of an abandoned house.

After our search, and due to a torrential rain fall that would be best described as a natural warm up for the typhoon to come that night, we snuck into a tea house and sat down to a nice cup or twelve. Thumbing through a better map, we came across what might be the best tourist attraction in all of Taiwan. That's sarcasm.....by the way.

Once in the city, we ended up waiting out the typhoon in a cramped saloon, ate some hotpot (with a jug of fresh, as in pureed fruit of, mango juice) and spent the night watching the weather turn from perfect to typhoon.

After our tea time, our hike through the tea fields and makign our way back to the city, we aimed ourselves towards the closest HotPot place for Crystal to have her official 'birthday dinner' over a tall jug of freshly pureed mango juice. Then we took to a bar, and had the choice of many more drinks, such as the always delicious 'male juice'. We gave that a pass....

Sunday, up early, chatted with fellow hostel folks and hit the road intending to be home early get some work done and go for a run. But nature had a different take on things... A typhoon, a delay

Anti-american beef still reigns after last years problems with trade and E.coli in American ground beef. On the right, Crystal waits (finally!!!) for our train home deep in the bowels of Taipei's train station.

So, Sunday became a bit of a challenge.

Stranded in Taipei for the entire day, waiting for the trains to run and take us home, we found ourselves trying to figure out "if we would get home and if we did make it, by which means. Because of the typhoon - which was astoundingly dreadful in Hualein, but weak in Taipei - all trains were cancelled, all buses were cancelled and the only way we could find to actually get home the same day was a cab ride (for $6000NT....something around $200 CDN....not going to happen!!). Out of the question. We waited, waited and waited....1pm announcement - trains cancelled. Wait, wait wait...3pm announcement - trains still cancelled. Go for another coffee, slept on the street a bit, walked around aimlessly. Wait, wait, wait....5pm announcement - Trains are going! Grabbed a ticket for the 6:30 southbound. We totally thought we would be sleeping the night at the train station in Taipei, waiting for a random 3/4/5 am train to take us home....but we made it. The weather let us go home. A seat on a train, a safe ride home, and cheap. Perfect. Like a birthday wish come true.


Arrived home around 9:30, drove through the deadness of the evening, lights out, trees and signs and roofs all over the place, road covered with broken glass (which eventually gave us a flat tire on our scooter) and general damages from the typhoon. It was a weird, weird ride. It looked like a different city. The thwacking of the typhoon left damage all over the city, and in the morning it became so much more pronounced. No pictures (yet) but this city is beaten.

Time will repair it, but time takes time.

[Update: Hualien City is still cleaning up after the damage from this typhoon. While it is not even close to the destruction left by the massive typhoon last year, leaving something in the area of 200 dead and villages destroyed, this one took its toll. Entire banana fields are flattened, palm trees lay prone on the street, building signs torn down, electrical wires and poles ripped out of their concrete nest and strewn across the roads and a general, overall mess. Nobody was killed, which is a grand thing indeed. ]

Typhon Season Should Be over...

...but this is the first one of the season. The first "real" one that will actually whack Taiwan upside the head. We will be away in the northern part of Taiwan for the weekend, so we will get wet...very stupendously wet, but we wont be in the direct line of this.

Still....to have the first real storm after the 'season' normally ends is a quirky thing indeed.

Sunday Epic Bike Ride

...then the sun rose on Sunday and we were off to the wilds again. Back on our bikes, we headed south towards a small little road that takes you into the coastal mountains, up a windy course and plops you right down at the trailhead of one of the nicest trails close to the city - the YueMei trail. It is a trail we have done twice, a nice three hour or so loop. But...today....the goal was to bike up the road, lunch at the trailhead, bike down the far side of the mountains and bike home along the Pacific. Leaving the house with a full head of steam, we aimed fer them mountains. Twelve litres of sweat and 8 hours later, we got home drained of anything resembling energy!

That heat, I tells ya....



Trevor taking a photo op break along the bike trail (the same one as the previous post, only this stretch goes south from our house, the last post was biking it north of our house)

Us at the marker telling us we are entering the Scenic Area, a grade lower than National Park but with similar restrictions, on the left. On the right, Crystal manages through our first of three...four...five...landslides along the backroads.

We left the trail and took the backroad route along the Shouguluan River, undulating our way through a peaceful part of Taiwan. This road takes us to one of my old schools, from 6 years ago, where I would teach every Wednesday. We stopped there and took a trip down memory lane for a while, re-hydrated and took off south again. Soon enough, after helping a pair of Taiwanese bikers find their way (I still don't think they believed me when I told them where a certain bridge was.....but they went that way anyway. Perhaps they believed me....who knows...), we arrived at the cutoff for the YueMei Trail road. From here on in it was up, up, up. Deadly up. We were not ready for it. But we did it!

The cutoff for the YueMei Trail road. A gorgeous, but savage, 5.1 km uphill slog in the noon sun. On the right a little friend we met along the way....big friend....probably 10cm long.

Yeah.....it was killing us. Up, up, up....

Looking back down one of the windy sections of the YueMei road, Crystal can be spotted making her way around the corner. On the right is a scenic view of what we had, at this point, accomplished. In the background is the outer limits of Hualien City. Also visible is the Shouguluan River.

Above and below: Managing two of the landslides that we met along the way Some muddy, some rocky, all scary. Probably should not pose by one in the future.....but this did bring up a healthy discussion of the probability of a second landslide occuring in the same place versus a fresh one in a nearby place. Two asteroids, one house situation. Are we safer to have lunch within a massive rockfall, or beside it where the rock has yet to fall...hmm....

Long story. This is the old highway that hugged the curvature of the mountains along the coast. Typhoons kicked the snot out of it, landslides knocked the snot out of it, people drove off the cliff....it was a treacherous road. So they built a tunnel inland a bit, closed the road and that is that. Now, as the cars are forbidden, it is a bicyclists playground. We took this route on chance that the entire road would not be washed away or blocked by fallen rock, and aside from the sinkholes it was a glorious ride. The road ahead is clear, the air clean and the cars gone.

Back on the main highway, Crystal pedals towards our break stop. And on the right our bikes taking a break from us.

So, all in all it was a perfect ride...8 hours through an excellent part of Taiwan that we had never biked before. One more notch in our belt of our "Bike Taiwan" dream!

Until next we speak....