The Bicycle Adventure Club - Come Ride With Us!

Taiwan: The Beautiful Island II

November 1st to November 16th

Ride Coordinator: Thomas Ryan
Report by: Jim McKinley

The trip was comprehensively documented daily by several of the participants using CGOAB: http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/taiwan2017.  This report will therefore not include details of daily travel.

We eased into the ride, beginning with an evening meeting in Taipei, followed the next day by a bus ride to the east coast where we assembled our bicycles. The tour traversed the least-populated portions of the island, including towns populated by native Taiwanese. The first day’s ride was mostly downhill through Taroko gorge. Over the following two weeks, the route took us south across the Tropic of Cancer to the southern extreme of the island, then north to the city of Tainan, where we again boarded a bus to ride through the urban Northwest and ended where we began. By design or chance, ride difficulty progressed to include longer distances and longer climbs, but ended with an easy day on flat terrain. 

Each evening began with Happy Hour — drinks and chips. The meeting was usually led by Tom Ryan, who seems to have internalized a huge, aged rolodex of … jokes. After rehashing the day, an additional topic was presented if time permitted (e.g., a brief lesson in Mandarin phrases for ‘thank you’, ‘hello’, etc.). The overall logistics, lodging, dining, and route designation were handled by a contractor, Grasshopper Adventures, and a detailed next-day ride description was delivered by them. The Grasshopper staff included the boss, Simon Foster, and three staff, two Americans and a Taiwanese, all of whom spoke Chinese. Grasshopper used a system of ride marking that included some encouraging text chalked on the pavement, but was based on peel-and-stick fluorescent green arrows.  The arrows proved to be practical and popular and biodegradable.

Taiwan is a mountainous country, experiencing seasonal torrential rains.  Geologically, It sits at the juncture where the Philippine crustal plate is subducted by the Eurasion plate in the north, and where the Eurasian plate is subjected by the Philippine plate in the south. A suture zone between the Eurasian and Philippine plates is expressed as the Huadong Valley near the east coast. There is little volcanic activity but abundant hot springs and frequent earthquakes. We did not experience an earthquake. Mountain ranges form spines along the northeast-southwest extent of the island. Because the highest mountain range is closer to the east coast, the drainages in the east are steep relative to the drainages feeding onto the densely inhabited western coastal plane. The ride began in the mountains within the Taroko gorge, plunging to the east coast. A ride west over the modest coast range led into the Huadong Valley, and we continued back over the range and down the east coast to Kenting.  After turning north, the tour climbed into the mountain foothills and eventually ended with a short steep downhill followed by travel across the flat coastal plain to Tainan on the west coast.

Butterflies were out in force.  One long snake and numerous macaques were observed at a distance.  Dogs were everywhere, mostly sleeping by the side of the road, sometimes sleeping in the road. The dogs were of a type: small, short-haired with a curled tail. In the East, the dogs were mostly black, with brown becoming more noticeable in the West. Occasionally, a sleeping road dog would rouse itself and stare down an approaching car.  In Taiwan, sleeping dogs don’t always lie.