Friday November 8, 2024
Breakfast was underwhelming at the hotel. The Pensioner’s bus tour had destroyed the place prior to us arriving. I ate a couple of red bean paste buns and cold scrambled eggs. There was no coffee as the oldies had emptied the machine and the fella on duty was trying to fix it, to no avail. Oh well, there is always 7/11 on the way. Leaving Kaohsiung I took a picture of the umbrellas, Ralf’s night-time shot was definitely better than my day time. I try.
It took us almost 25 kms to get out of Kaohsiung. For the most part Google took us on Cycle Route 1. I was amazed once again about the amount of industry that is in this area. Primarily steel and aluminium smelters, a couple of petro chemical plants and a massive port where all the imports and exports come into and leave Taiwan.
There was a lot of heavy goods traffic going in and out of the factories and the port. Head and eyes on swivels trying to watch for all the traffic, the traffic lights and following Ralf who was also following the map. Fun 25 kms! We stopped for lunch at a 7/11 and a couple from the Czech Republic pulled in behind us. They are following the Cycling Route One and for the most part are enjoying the ride. We chatted for a while and then they continued on and we went in to have something to eat.
Eventually, we crossed into Pingtung County. This is a more rural county and google took us away from Cycle Route 1. We spotted a giant fish and as we had plenty of time before checking in at the Homestay/AirBnB we went to investigate. This is the Dapeng Bay Scenic Area.
This area was the site of the Taiwan Lantern Festival in 2019, it is now a little run down. However, what remained was fabulous.
We headed out to a yellow building, called a Maritime Building that was on a spit. It was a café and had a waiting list for people to eat inside, it was very popular.
We did a little circular route of the park and came across this fantastic sculpture of a woman. The skirt was made from oyster shells.
There was also a sculpture of a seaplane. It was well worth the stop as we had not seen anything very exciting up until that point.
It is a shame that this area is not open, as we would have loved to have climbed into this seaplane.
As we cycled along the coastal sea wall we passed hundreds of fish farms agitating the water for cray fish and shrimp. I will have to be careful in this area to make sure they don’t sneak some shellfish into my dinner. We also saw a lot of floating solar panels.
Again, the pollution was high and by the time we finished the day in Fangliao the smog was heavy in the air.
We arrived a little early at the AirBnb and waited for someone to show up at 3:00 p.m., the check-in time. Ralf emailed the owner, but got very little in response, other than he would be here but not giving any indication of time. By 3:30 we were getting a little impatient and Ralf discovered that they also had a restaurant in town. He headed out to the restaurant to find out when we could get into out room. At 4:15 the owner came and let us into the room. I was hot, sweaty, headachy and annoyed. I was not very polite to him.
The room is nice, we managed to get some laundry hand-washed and Ralf worked out to use the washing machine that was outside to spin the clothes. I am not sure what we would do without google translate on this trip.
