Written by By Big John / Translated by: 羅文穗

My plan is to walk around the entire coastline of Taiwan , clockwise, staying as close to the shore as reasonably possible. My goal is to finish it in a total of 80 days. Around Taiwan in 80 days! It’s catchy!

Follow Big John’s progress on his blog: http://aroundtaiwanin80days.blogspot.com

I stood there alone, looking at a big tunnel in the side of the mountain. It had a huge iron gate and some electrical boxes on the wall. It seemed modern and well maintained. But what was its purpose? The passage disappeared into darkness after 50 meters. Should I? Oh, what the hell! I walked inside. The floor was wet and littered with small rocks. I edged forwards cautiously in the almost total darkness. Then, I felt an oily, dusty breeze on my face and heard a noise. At first it was faint, but it grew louder and louder - a roaring, clattering sound, definitely mechanical. It got louder and much nearer, so I ran back to the tunnel mouth. Breathless, I turned and saw the lights of a train’s windows flashing by in the distance. Ha! I had wandered into an access to a train tunnel!

I should have guessed it. I was in the rugged country between Suao and Hualien, where trains are in tunnels more often than not. But I was tired from walking for 6 hours in 36-degree heat. Still, despite feeling a bit dumb, I was amused. After all, I was out there to complete another leg of my project, my walk around Taiwan. And what’s a good adventure without a few quirky episodes?

My plan is to walk around the entire coastline of Taiwan, clockwise, staying as close to the shore as reasonably possible. I started out in Danshui in November 2006, and - as of the date of writing, August 25th - have walked for 29 days, reaching Sansiantai in Taidong County. Because I’m too busy to take a few months off, I do the walk in stages of one or more days. The shoreline of Taiwan is about 1566km long. My goal is to finish it in a total of 80 days. Around Taiwan in 80 days! It’s catchy!

But why walk around Taiwan? Because some mad part of my soul needed a quest. I have always been fascinated by stories of adventurous journeys. One memorable one is when Don and Dana Starkell paddled a canoe from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada to Belem at the mouth of the Amazon River, a journey of 18,000km. Another great journey was that of Brits Ranulph Fiennes and Michael Stroud, who in 1993 spent 95 days dragging 200kg-pound sleds across Antarctica.

I read such stories with great pleasure, often vicariously placing myself in the expedition instead of the actual explorers, but I never took it beyond the armchair fantasy stage. But a few years ago, I felt a yearning to do something special, and to really bond with Taiwan. Thus, the idea of the walk was born. It had the big advantage of being a hell of a lot easier than the journeys of those real daredevils! So, one day I started walking.

Getting Started

The depth of detail I absorbed by walking along the coastline from Danshui to Keelung made it seem like a new place. I passed through well-known communities like Chinshan and Yeliou, as well as many small, humble places, the kind you miss if you blink while driving through. My rule was to always try to be close to the ocean, unless the shoreline was very difficult or inaccessible. So I saw many fishing ports and villages, and got my feet wet countless times crossing streams on the beach. My routine was: take the MRT to Danshui, get a bus down the coast, get off, walk, walk, walk, get a bus back. By the time I arrived in Keelung on Day 5, I had gotten off to a good start.

Walking from Keelung to Toucheng (Yilan), I was once again struck by how beautiful Taiwan is. On Day 6, I started in Keelung, and passed through Heping Island, a small, pretty island with strange rock formations. It also has lovely views of the high-cliffed Keelung Island. I continued on to Bishia fishing port, which has an amazing display of seafood. Just south of there I came to the hilly peninsula of Badouzu, which has a wonderful view of Keelung Mountain. Keelung Mountain is a really magnificent slab of rock, sharp and yet broad, right next to the sea.

South of there, there’s a long stretch with no beach and not much space for a road between rock and ocean, so I was on the shoulder getting lashed with the wind from passing trucks. But the views were imposing. Of special interest were Jinguashe, with its weird old copper plant and discolored bay, and the cliffs, harbors and rocky beaches around Bitou Cape and Longdong. Just past that in Yenliao, where they are building Taiwan’s 4th nuclear power plant, I came across the beach where the Japanese occupation forces arrived in 1895. I walked down that long stretch of golden sand to Fulong, with its dragon temple by the sea.

Into Yilan

One afternoon and evening, I walked around the lonely peninsula between Fulong and the Dali / Dashi area and caught a local train home. The next weekend I hiked from Shihcheng to Toucheng, which is along the train route, and more heavily populated. This whole stretch offers views of Turtle Island. The plum for me was Dashi fishing port. I walked through it one morning just as a bunch of old-fashioned fishing boats were arriving. People on shore scrambled madly to get ready to sell the stuff the instant it reached land. Cranes hoisted crates of seafood up from the decks and onto the wharf. Eager hands grabbed them and unpacked then into pans of crushed ice on metal tables. There were sharks, eels, abalone, and many varieties of mussels, clams and glistening silver fish. The ground was slippery with fish guts. It was noisy, and customers and merchants jostled each other carelessly. In the harbor, more boats were coming in, others going out, and they all had to maneuver around each other. It was colorful chaos, lively and fun!

From just south of Toucheng to the outskirts of Suao, Yilan’s shoreline is one monotonous gray-sand beach. It’s about 45 km long, and has very little development. It does however have a bicycle path along much of its length. It took two days of walking to get to Suao. That’s one long beach.

Along the Edge

Walking from Suao to Hualien was definitely an intense experience. The coastline consists of cliffs and steep hills right on the ocean, sometimes with a narrow strip of beach. Occasionally, there are coastal valleys where a river joins the sea, and here there are farms, villages, and train stations. Outside of these areas, it was virtually impossible to follow the shoreline closely. But I soon discovered another way to have a really authentic travel experience: following bits of the old Suao-Hualien highway.

In this area, the outer edge of the mountains facing the ocean is extremely unstable. Sun bakes the rocks, causing them to expand and fracture; earthquakes shake them loose, and typhoons wash away soil that can bind them to the face. The result is constant rock falls and landslides. It’s a terrible place for a road, which is why much of the original highway has been replaced by the current road, which is still far from safe. Quite often, today’s road goes through the mountains in tunnels in places where the old road went along the cliff edge. But the old roadbeds are still there, and offer some amazing views. Sometimes they are overgrown with weeds, and sometimes they stop abruptly where the side of the mountain has literally fallen away.

My first experience with the old road was south of Dongao. I followed a side road next to a tunnel. A few kilometers on, the road split into two: to the right, a mountain road, to the left, an abandoned section of the old highway. There was a short tunnel and an easy-to-climb metal gate. But, as Jerry Seinfeld says, “Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason.” There was an old highway sign just after the tunnel that was riddled with what must have been bullet holes. I guessed it was just some country boys – quite possibly Formosan Aborigines with gun permits for hunting- doing a bit of target practice. Still, I hoped they weren’t around!

I walked along the rock-strewn road for another 20 minutes when, with total suddenness, a treetop 20 meters in front of me exploded into shards! I heard the “whack” of an impact, cracking wood, and then rocks banging down the cliff face. I was stunned. Obviously, a rock had just fallen from high up the cliff face to my right, smacked the bejesus out of a tree, and tumbled down the cliff face to my left. Nervously, I walked as close to the inside cliff wall as I could. The road terminated in bush a short while later, and I had to walk all the way back to the main road. I felt quite relieved when I got there!

Still, I followed many other sections of “lost highway” along this route without incident. Sometimes these old bits of road have their own tunnels. They are often connected by perpendicular access passages to the current road tunnels, and also have “window tunnels” to the outside edge of the cliffs for air and light. So, in some places I walked through a weird old tunnel, where I could occasionally see the orange light of the modern tunnel and cars zooming by on one side, or stick my head out the other side and look out from the middle of a cliff. It was pretty cool. The longest tunnel was about 300 meters long, and so dark that I could see both tunnel entrances and the window holes but not the ground in front of me. Walking through felt like being on a spaceship going from star to star. When I climbed out through a window tunnel, I was in the middle of the Chingshui Cliffs.

Highway 11

South of Hualien I followed Highway 11. It is separated from the Eastern Rift Valley by the Coast Range. These mountains are overall smaller and gentler than the Central Range, yet picturesque. It’s a lovely area: the aboriginal presence is quite noticeable in the bamboo houses, and statues of warriors, princesses, and animals. It’s a very laid-back place. There are coconut palms, rice paddies and pastureland next to the sea, and pretty little towns with people sitting outside mending nets.

On one walk I was treated to a symphony of fantastic light. Approaching Shihti Harbor in southern Hualien County, I was struck by the quality of the mid-afternoon sunlight. The air was almost glowing, the sea an incredibly rich blue. Later, the light mellowed, coloring the white rocks orange, and the sun’s angle coaxed shadows out of the lines of the mountainside. That night, I left my guesthouse for some air and looked up at the night sky. It was amazing! The stars were incredibly bright. Every corner of the sky was filled with constellations. Away from the town lights the effect was twice as dramatic. The Milky Way was clearly visible, stretching in two giant bands across the sky.

The next morning I got up early to watch my first east coast sunrise, which didn’t disappoint. Far out to sea, there were columns of marching clouds. The sun came up in the middle of them, turning them first a coppery cherry color, and then slowly heating them to incandescent tangerine. Seconds before the sun actually rose, the birds started chattering and squawking madly. Then up it came in a stab of white light. Ahh! I walked on, enjoying the early morning mood immensely. Everything was green, fresh and perfect. The sea sparkled, and a few bits of mist still stuck to the trees on the mountain slopes. Later on the day would become hot, and I would sweat like a pig. My feet would hurt, I’d get abrasions on my inner thighs, and heat rash on my ass. But I didn’t care! It’s worth it.

On my walk I sometimes feel elated, sometimes lonely and vulnerable. Who knows what might lie ahead? There’s a stretch of coastline between southern Taidong County and Kending that is pretty remote. I still don’t know exactly how I’ll make it through, but I’ll find a way. If things get tough, I’ll just remember the hard-core adventurers and their stories that inspired me in the first place, and take comfort in the fact that what I’m doing is much less crazy!