Taiwan’s Big Sur, a Bat Cave, Indians, Lobsters and more!

Total Miles Traveled: 40,432

It looks a lot like California’s central coast, but it’s Taiwan’s east coast, complete with dramatic mountains, dark volcanic rock, and turbulent seas.   Today, we’re headed out of the mountains, back towards the sea, to make our way to southeastern Taiwan.

On the way out of Taroko Gorge, we noticed a vendor selling tribal handicrafts… a Taiwanese Indian pirate cap – you seriously won’t find those anywhere else in the world!  We’re taking orders now… 😉  Seriously though, a lot of the tribal art/handicrafts we’ve seen is not unlike American Indian art we’ve seen back home, or even in South America!

One of our stops was to do a tea tasting…

… before heading to a Taiwanese Indian dance performance.  It reminded me of seeing dance performances in the Hawaiian islands.

After the performance, we headed back to the coast.

WARNING … TANGENT:  At this point, I just have to mention how awesome mobile technology is these days.  Lisa had to send off an important email for her work and I, well, I had to set my lineup for Fantasy Football.  Using EDGE network access on my unlocked iPhone, I created a wifi access point that shared my internet connection with Lisa’s laptop, allowing her to access her Gmail and send off an email with attachment.  And, I was able to use my Yahoo Sports Fantasy Football app to set my lineup!  All of this while we were speeding along the east coast of Taiwan in a minivan.  Seriously?  Yes, it was awesome!

Now back to the trip.  Along one stretch of highway, we came across an art studio run by a local aboriginal.  The story goes that he was unsuccessful in his trained vocation.  When he got older, he gave up and started to make art for fun.  The style was so well received that he has started to increase manufacturing.  In fact, while we were there, he was negotiating a manufacturing deal in China.  Pretty neat!   Good for him!  It’s a good reminder for us to follow our dreams!

The cafe was on the coast so we started to get glimpses of the beautiful Big Sur-esque scenery we had heard about.

Next, we stopped in a local fishing village for a snack, which turned out to be more of a meal.  They said the lobsters were in season.  Here’s my Dad proudly displaying a giant spiny lobster.

Here he is again with the second lobster, only this lobster wasn’t so happy he was holding him by his antennae.  So he kept flapping his tail forcefully.  Gotta love the expression on my Dad’s face!

And, here are the lobsters, steamed to perfection.  Quite good – firm, sweet meat.  Probably a bit overpriced but you don’t get lobster this fresh every day.

Later we stopped for a real lunch – all you can eat shabu shabu with local mountain veggies, ‘shrooms, meats, and other good stuff…

After lunch, we got back on the road … here we are at a scenic point… beautiful isn’t it?

The waters here are actually quite rough, it can be very windy,  the beaches are rocky, and the whole east coast of Taiwan is susceptible to typhoons and rock slides.  That and the fact that the coastal land is reserved for indigenous Taiwanese tribes is why there hasn’t been much development despite the beauty you see here.

So, as we headed further south, our driver stopped at a place which looked pretty boring – no view, just the mountainside.   He wouldn’t tell us where we were going.  We climbed up the mountain a bit and were shuffled into a small dark cave with what looked like an underground river and a boat that pointed in to the darkness.  Sweet!

As you can guess, the water is freshwater from higher up on the mountain and is draining slowly toward the ocean.

The cave is a perfect hiding place for thousands of bats, belonging to several different species.  They were all trying to sleep as we floated below them.  We couldn’t help thinking – were they going to relieve themselves as we looked at them from below?

Back on the road, we visited a couple of temples – here’s one with a lot of buddhas lined up that made for a fun photo:

And a national park that featured a “nine-arches bridge”:

… with a fantastic view of the coastline…

We stopped for some shi4 jia1 (buddha head fruit) which tastes a bit like banana with large black seeds.  It spoils very quickly so you gotta eat’em fast!

Finally, we stopped at this park near the Taitung airport known for its “tofu” and “ginger” shaped rock.  I didn’t really see the ginger part, but the “shelves” of rock are the tofu.

Phew!  There was a lot in this post.  I think we actually covered two days here, not one!   For all the photos, check out the slideshow below:

[flickrslideshow acct_name=”tony-chen” id=”72157625321426419″]

Next, we head back to Taipei…