Ride Around Sun Moon Lake

November 12, 2024

We woke to an overcast morning and perfect temperature. It was not too hot. Our extra day here and another lazy morning gave me time to get caught up with things at home.

My very nice balcony room at Mei Jen House. I had to switch to a different room for the last night.

We had a western breakfast at nearby restaurant before starting our circumnavigation of Sun Moon Lake.

The trip around the lake was pleasant, but I’m not sure why it makes lists of ‘bucket list’ rides. At least it was not as busy as feared. We saw very few of the tandem e-bikes that we’ve seen near the area we’re staying. And almost no buses.

We did have a few areas of pushing our bikes on a section of the trail that had stairs and a central ramp for bikers.

Sue had a close encounter with one of the monstrous spiders - she biked into it. It’s good to know they’re not dangerous.

I tried to mostly rely on my front derailleur to avoid the front shifter that is living on borrowed time.

A German guy at the end of his one month tour gave us some advice for beach time. Let’s hope the good weather holds. There always seem to be storms gathering south of Taiwan.

Starting out around the lake, on the top of an earth dam.

More infrastructure showing that this lake isn’t natural.

For part of the route, we were on a path. There were some stairs and pushing involved, but there was a track for the bike wheels, so it wasn’t too awful.

We stopped at a temple built to hold the relics of Xuanzang, a 7th Century Chinese month who made a 17 year journey around China and India. From what I understand, the Japanese took his bones from China during their occupation. Then in the 1970s they gave some of the bones to Taiwan. The bones are in a newer/fancier temple above this one that we visited.

There’s a bustling community at the east end of the lake. We enjoyed a somewhat unusual lunch of grilled squid, an egg tart (almost as good as Lisbon!), and soft serve black tea ice cream. And out of guilt, I also had a banana.

Our fluorescent jackets make us easy to spot in a crowd.

This is the Nine Frogs Stack. At the lowest water levels, all nine frogs are visible. Today was a five frog day.

We had a few rain drops, and this poor dog had to suffer the indignity of putting on a raincoat.

We had beer and dinner with Rigo, a delightful guy from Leipzig who is a much more ambitious biker than us. Yesterday he rode 3300 m up to Wuling Pass. Dinner was at the same place as two nights ago because our original selection was closed. We didn’t repeat any dishes. Like two nights ago, all the dishes were very good. The standouts for me were king oyster mushrooms with basil and ginger, and eggplant with pork.

After dinner, we gave Rigo a tour of the 7-Eleven to show home the yams, onigiri, and tea eggs, which are favourites road treats for us. We may see him again in the very south of Taiwan.

Out dinner crew. We had fun chatting with Rigo, who is a much more ambitious cyclist than us. He’s done the BC Bike Race, and the Cape Epic race in South Africa multiple times.

It was raining lightly as we walked the 50 m back to our hotel. The first real rain of our trip, and it really wasn’t much. The forecast is still looking good too.

Today's ride: 30 km (19 miles)
Total: 295 km (183 miles)

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