You Gotta Take the Bad with the Good

Cycling out of Taipei: the North Coast

Whoa! Our exit from Taipei was a complete 180 from our entrance. Mitchell pointed out that there was a bike specific path one block from his apartment ( how did we miss that?!?). That path led us to the Taipei cycle and pedestrian dedicated paths that led us not only out of the city, but to the north coast of Taiwan. The ride consisted of many conversations such as: Chiara (sarcastically): 'This is terrible.' and  Bruce (sarcastically) 'I know, Taiwan is terrible. How are we ever going to survive this?' And every turn seemed to just become more surreal and postcardesque.  We rode for 40km with scarcely a motor vehicle near us and exited the city joining the coastline Rt 2 route around the northern aspect of the island.  The day was building up to be the best of the tour thus far with small seaside villages, quiet roads, beautiful sunny weather and two happy riders.  

   

That was until the route took a left turn....literally a left fork in the road that I didn't see and Chiara did, though she was a bit behind me and didn't see where I went and that's where the cautionary tale begins.  Though we had planned for such an event of losing each other our contingency somehow failed and as did our always patchy WiFi we have ben relying on for any email, text etc.  Jump forward 2 hours and you have two riders, on the same road 20km apart and no idea which one is in front of the other.  Flash forward 4 hours and after a bit of hard to decipher text messages and an assurance that both were on the right track you have two riders almost 60 km apart in the dark, hungry, confused and exhausted.  Turns out the place we were both trying to find, Jiufen has an "Old Street"  as do many other towns that have names that also start with "J" and on maps are hard to find because they are so small.  Now you may be beginning to understand what this all adds up to...a day that started like a fairytale and ended in FUBAR.  With nothing left to do but go to sleep in our respective locations and fight a new battle in the morning we resigned ourselves to our fates.  Chiara went to the local police station and found the most sympathetic, concerned and helpful public servants since we were in Japan and misplaced her wallet.  They found a hotel for her across from the station and made sure she had her phone charged and that she knew where she would need to go the next day.  Bruce managed to find the place we were staying but all the amenities had been long since shut for the day.  

The picture Bruce sent to show me the home stay.

Luckily the intended guesthouse was very lax in their idea of "closing for the night" and I found a friendly bunch of Austrian travelers outside that helped me find some WiFi (so I was able to find out that Chiara was indeed safe and tucked in for the night) and that there was an empty space in the house that I could lay my head for a few hours.

  A big shout out to Sebastian, Max and Anna...hopefully we can take them up on their offer to come and visit them on our way back to the States.  The next day Chiara was up at the crack of 6 and she blazed through the mountains, through steep winding roads on her way to rendevous in the quaint old mining town that was intended goal the day before.  The drama of the evening wore away as we made our way to the guesthouse deciding to enjoy a full day together in the little hillside town, eating and gawking at the busloads of tourists that poured into the impossibly small "Old Street".  The views were amazing from the streets but in the daylight we appreciated the strange little homestay with the windowless room we rented that was built into the hillside, a much cheaper and mustier option than the other rooms.  However this came with added bonuses of a dark quiet night sleep and movie channels with English langauge films! You know that things have gone a bit askew when your laying awake into the wee hours watching Night at the Museum 2 and actually enjoying yourself.   We headed back out towards the coast and the famed Taroko Gorge, with a better plan in case we lost each other again and a desire to stay a little closer together when we cycle.

A view from thet homestay.

Narrow little streets on Jishan Old Street.

Evening lights and clouds.  A beautiful sunset.