Where to start the description of a great day? First off, there were no earthquakes overnight, so I slept better. And although it was 13 C when I woke up at 6, it was sunny and close to 20 C when I left just before 10 am.
Once again, I’m the only guest in a place that can accommodate more. My surf shop hosts provided me with a take-out breakfast sandwich on white bread. I supplemented that with an orange from Fruity 101 in Shoufeng. I think I’m now down to carrying just one guava.
After a short warmup, my first challenge of the day was a really nice 10-ish km climb averaging about 5 percent grade. It was a perfect day for it.
This is the entire main street of Fulong. Not a big place! The train station is at the head of the street.
My big climb of the day was on route 102. It was very quiet today, just me and a few scooters. I saw two other cyclists descending. Will it be busy with motorcycles on the weekend, I wonder? It’s very close to Taipei. At this point, I still had a way to go.
The views were great. There was no development, farming, or housing up here. I was trying to understand why the road was even built, and then came across a sign describing trails for migration and military transport routes from the 1900s.
There were lots of other cyclists at my viewpoint, the Buyan Pavilion. Most of them were part of a group of retirees who bikes together every Friday. No e-bikes in this crew. They invited me to descend with them and have lunch, but we were heading in opposite directions.
I descended to the town of Jiufen, which had a good and copper mine in the Japanese era, and is now a tourist centre and home of a gold mining museum.
I was enjoying the day so much that I decided to depart from my planned route and do a bit of exploring and add extra mileage using Google maps. That turned out to be more difficult than expected, because I found navigation tough without my Garmin telling me where to go and on three occasions I overshot my intended goal and descended further than planned. Oops.
Jiufen is a very hilly and busy tourist town. All the peaks are hikeable, I think.
Feral cats that have been vaccinated and spayed or neutered are marked by having an ear clipped—left for males, and right for females. The ear clips are so they don’t accidentally capture the same cat twice. This girl is good to go!
Some mining leftovers. The mine was operated by POW slave labourers captured in Singapore during World War 2. Horrific treatment by the Japanese led to many deaths.
One I descended from Jiufem, I had a flat and fast ride to Keelung.
The Keelung area has the biggest fishing port I’ve seen here. And there’s a fish market that I’m sure is fascinating. But the public hours start at about 2:30 am, so I gave it a miss.
My hotel is a nice place on the waterfront, with a view of a giant cruise ship docked here. My bike is in the basement next to the linen supplies, along with the bikes of a French couple about my age - they arrived shortly after I did. They’re also heading home in a couple of days after a lap of Taiwan.
Dinner was at the nearby night market.. I had a duck burrito, a couple of one-bite grilled sausages, and a bowl of crab soup that came with a separate bowl of mushroom fried rice. I wasn’t going to get the rice, but the young woman on the adjacent stool insisted, and ordered it for me. Both were delicious. I capped the meal off with some peanut flavoured shaved ice, which is a popular treat here that I hadn’t tried yet. It isn’t ice cream I don’t think, but it was tasty and would be very good on a hot day. I promise to eat some veggies tomorrow. I didn’t see any other western tourists at the night market except for the French cyclists.
Keelung is my favourite night market to date. It has dedicated food stalls rather than taking over a street. It was busy in a fun way, without long waits for anything.
Betsy EvansTo Scott AndersonYes, I think I’ve been very lucky with the weather at the north end of Taiwan. It rained here almost every day for the first three weeks of my trip. I figured I’d just take a train to end the trip if it was still wet up here. Today was another nice one. Reply to this comment 3 weeks ago
