My Taidong Road Trip

Travel Taiwan Travel
1

I waited 'til Tuesday for the road to clear of the weekend traffic then hit the road packed with weekday traffic as I meandered my way through the mountains between Taipei and Illan. This long and winding road was charged with that familiar mountain beauty that we often take for granted around Taipei and infused with the smell of my daughter chucking over my editions of Master and Commander and 1421 the Year China Discovered America. Taking a leaf out of Master and Commander, I had that landlubber keel hauled and lashed.

Thankfully the mountain air was fresh and my companion soon passed out from the drama of her first encounter with the evils of being all at sea. This leg of the journey was purely functional so I was pretty much blinkered to the beauty unfolding around me except as we passed through the conifer forests and swept down out of the heavens to be greeted by our first glimpses of the Pacific.

Illan is a construction site so I wasted no time there and quickly took on the beasts of burden that feed all that demand for concrete and road building, the dreaded Su-ao gravel trucks. The road from Su-ao to Hualian is a beautiful fuck up. No pirate adventure would be complete without the sheer cliffs that pitch hundreds, sometimes thousands of feet down into the tranquil azure below hiding coves and caves where treasures surely abound along side the wrecks of cars and lives that have paid the ultimate price for progress. But this section passed much quicker than I expected, only 2hrs with a couple of stop offs to drink in the beauty and air out my jockey shorts.

I ploughed on straight passed Taroka Gorge and Hualian city saving them for my return journey and arrived at my first destination Hualian Ocean Park. This is a place I

2

Fox, Good post. Thanks for sharing your trip.

3

Wish I had known…I was down there at around the same time. We probably passed each other somewhere along the Suao gong lou as you were heading south and I was heading home… :sunglasses:

4

Route 9 between Toucheng and Yilan City is indeed a construction site. The rest of the county is not.

If anyone else is going to take this route (from Toucheng all the way down to Su’ao), you’ll save yourself a lot of headaches by skipping over to the No. 2 Coastal Highway. You won’t see any actual coast along this bit, but the ride is much more pleasant and you won’t be stuck bumper to bumper with every other Taibei cityslicker daytripper if you happen to go during the weekend.

5

That’s probably very good advice. I also noticed the gravel trucks are meaner before you hit Su-ao. It seems after Su-ao they are a lot more curtious on the mountain road, but when they’re on the highway it seems to be a free-for-all.