2023-10-21
Start: 10:00 / Arrival: 17:00
Distance: 70km / Gained height approx 1350 hm (GPS is super inaccurate due to the gorge)
Woke up and enjoyed a fantastic view from the balcony. Then went to a small local breakfast restaurant with super sweet owners. Had some tasty Jian Bing with cheese and some toast. Afterwards the woman of the couple, that runs the shop, came to us (sitting a couple meters away from it) to ask if everything was ok. Sure it was!
Then went to the next 7/11 to pick up some supply for the climb up. And now the fun starts.
Cycling up Taroko (we only went ~23km into it) is an amazing adventure. Surrounded by steep sides, small paths, you come along temples, dangerous looking hiking bridges and loads of tunnels. We let the pictures speak for themself.
Going up, we heard about some road closures, but later it turned out, that this affected only a part after our choosen endpoint.
Arriving at our endpoint, we walked around the temple, had the tea egg from the 7/11 and chilled a little bit.
Going down then was so much fun. You just roll down for quite some kilometers in an astonishing surrounding. Before exiting, we said goodbye to Taroko at the last temple.
Transfer to Hualien was then smooth, along a bigger, but nicely ridable street. Then took a parallel street with loads of interesting plants and some kilometer of graveyard.
After checking in at the hotel (funnily themed as a prison) we went for a walk around the nice town of Hualien. Enjoyed some stinky tofu at the night market, laughed about a crazy talking parking automat in front of a supermarket, wrote the blog and finished eating with some fried onigiri.
Then went back to the hotel to get some much needed sleep.
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