Tour Taiwan: Day in Hualien

Kenny's room lets him get in touch with his more sensitive self.  Here's a photo. Very strawberry.  

My room is a much more manly nautical theme. 

Kenny kept on insisting we try and hire motor scooters.  I had heard of a place called Pony that hires scooters to foreigners but. I thought that we would need an international drivers licence which I had neglected to arrange before hand.  Anyways, we found Pony very easily as it is near the railway station.  To my utter astonishment they gave us two Yamaha Breeze 125 scooters for $NTD500 each for the day.  They asked if we had riden a bike before and that was it.  Here's a picture of the scooters. A full 125 cc's of raw power.  

What to do?   Well why not ride up the Rift Valley and see what happens.  I quickly found a road that led us to the Eastern Rift Valley scenic area and we followed that.  About 15 kms up the road we stopped for coffee at Lake Luye.  I then formulated a plan. We would ride up the road 50 kms to Guangfu and over the mountains to Felnglin.  After that we could ride up the coast along route 11 back to Hualien.  Total trip about 150 kms.  

Off we rode sitting on speeds of about 70-80 kms an hour.  This was about the speed the traffic was going at and I did not want to get the attraction of the law.  We stoped in Guangfu for a drink and light lunch.  Kenny had sushi, I had a - actually I can't remember.  Then it was over the mountain pass. I remember thinking that every car is going to catch us and it is going to be slow going.  Boy was I wrong.

Scooters on the mountain

These scooters actually handle really well.  I found we could really throw them into corners and get through the corners pretty well. And Kenny discovered that if you put your foot down hard on the side you hare cornering into that made it even better.  He was right.  Our problem now became one that we caught every car in front of us.  So we would catch, stop and then catch up again.  The climb was about 25 kms and it was great fun.  I also thought this would be a great road to ride over on a bicycle.  

Into Fenglin we turned up the coastline. It was once again a spectacular day with beautiful scenery.  Here are some photos.

We finally got back into Hualien about 5.30 PM just after dusk.  Returned the scooters and returned to our accomodation.  Dinner was at the night markets. These are amazing places and if you ever want to see the soul of a Taiwanse city or town head to the local night markets.  I guarantee it will be an experience you will never forget.  

Tomorrow we will ride around Hualien on the bikes.  Then on Wedensday we are booked in for a Taroko Gorge Tour.