Further North

Fuli and Yuli

The sun penetrates the curtains but I stay put under the covers until gone 7.30.

Last night I’d booked breakfast at eight and that’s what time I carry my panniers down the couple of flights of stairs. I’m the last up: Charlotte, her father and aunt and uncle and cousin are milling around on the ground floor. They've been waiting for me, their first ever guest; a foreigner touring on a bicycle.

The entrance area wasn’t something I looked at before going up to inspect the room last night and, in the darkness, there wasn’t much to see anyway. In the bright sunshine, it's now obvious the whole building has been carefully thought out and decorated with a deft touch, with arty driftwood forming the main features.

A bleached, dead straight 30cm-diameter trunk stands vertically, wedged between the tiled floor and high ceiling, which is around 5 metres above. Charlotte tells me the large front window had to be removed to get it in place. A few gnarly seats with small carved tabletops attached are spaced around.

I venture out to the front courtyard and sit at a metal folding table and get served a glass of milk, followed by some milky tea, then my breakfast sandwich. My world seems good.

Charlotte and her father discuss my route north. He tells me about interesting places and I make a note on the map about some yellow flowers grown on a high mountain. He says I may get there today and then double back to the small town of Yuli to catch the train home. I have my doubts, however, as there’s a range of mountains to tackle first, via route 23, once I’ve got to the T-junction around 10km further up Highway 11.

They don't know how far Yuli is, although my guess is something like 75km.

It’s getting on for nine when I wave everyone goodbye. The sun is hot already, the sky cloudless, and SPF 30 covers my arms and face. It’ll get sweated away before too long.

The road is quite empty; a nice surprise. There’s a decent lane for bicycles and scooters. I stick close to the white line.

The 11 hugs the coast.

Ahead a cyclist is going at a pace similar to mine - 20km/hr - despite being on what appears to be a basic bike. Closer up, the rider is dressed up in a nylon hoody and tweedy long pants, but it takes me a few minutes to ride alongside. My greeting seems to come as a surprise.

With large sunglasses, it’s hard to judge the age of the woman, but my guess is late teens (it turns out she's 25). The bike is an urban rental one, with just three gears and a distinctive large rear mudguard that prevents skirts from getting blown and tangled in the rotating spokes. It's the familiar type of no-nonsense machine you can see on the streets of London and Paris etc.

After a few minutes I’ve gone far enough ahead to stop and get a photo of her riding towards the camera. She then pulls to a halt and speaks to me in great English. We exchange plans and say we’ll probably bump into each other again as she - Shau-ming - is heading back to Taitung City later. She doesn’t know how far she’ll go. I tell her she’s brave, and hope it doesn’t sound patronizing. She tells me that it’s me who’s the brave one and I reply that I’m just crazy.

We then ride along together until the coastal village of Dulan, a kilometer or so away, where there’s a 7-Eleven and consequently my chance of an iced latte. I cool down with two.

The congregation in a road-side church is singing a hymn that spills out onto the open highway, which soon after starts gently climbing for a long stretch.

The incline isn’t very steep, but ahead there’s a cyclist walking his bike. From a distance it looks like a foreigner and as I pass I can see that it is. You can just tell.

He’s pushing a small-wheeled bike too small for him and there’s a kind of grimace-cum-smile on the guy’s face as my wheels roll quickly by him and on up the hill.

Very close to the top is a welcome rest stop and sweat is pouring from me as I leave my bike and walk inside the wall-less structure. The sea view is good and the sweet kiwi slurpy hits the spot.

The foreigner I passed eventually walks past, seemingly on mission, without stopping.

Just as I am about to leave, Shao-ming turns up. She’d stopped to visit somewhere and is full of beans. We'd have talked some more, but I have quite a few miles to cover, not to mention a pretty big climb to get up.

There’s a gentle drop into Donghe. At the bottom my front wheel veers left and I come to a narrow bridge, now only for pedestrians, and over to my left is a lush valley which I know route 23 will trace. A few tourists chat to me and I ask if they know whether there are any cafes up the hidden road. They don’t.

My bottle has some water left, but not enough.

The climb is initially shaded and the slope nothing to get too worried about. After five kilometers of pedaling there’s a group of a houses and one is selling stuff - nick-knacks are displayed in the large plate window. A large refrigerator inside, right at the back, has the usual array of drinks and after getting a couple of bottles, I sit out front on the shaded porch and wonder how far it is to the top. My guess is five or ten kilometers.

It’s now really hot - almost midday - probably 35C and not the best time to tackle a climb. My brain is being fried. I have no appetite.

A woman comes out and speaks to me in Chinese, handing me some small square cartons that look like they pack soap, but which I find contain pineapple cakes.

She returns a minute later with some jig-sawed shapes of 10mm-tick wood, one the outline of Taiwan and another in the rounded shape of a lotus. She proceeds to show me a thin red piece of cord that needs screwing into to the latter, but when I try to pierce the edge of the pale wood, it splits.

Her partner gets roused from his nap and grumpily comes out to assist. He also fails to pierce the second lotus shape and I tell him not to worry. He then says it’s still 36km to Fuli and then shocks me with the fact that there are another 20km of uphill to go. Whao!

Is he right?

Probably.

His info’ tallies with the first milestone, which marks Highway 23’s 35km point (from Fuli). I then begin to hope that he actually meant the top is at the road’s 20km marker, meaning it’d be just something like 15 more kilometers of climbing.

There’s only one way to find out.

Off I go.

The route is more or less empty. A car passes every few minutes.

The gradient isn’t too bad, but my lowest gears come in useful. The kilometer markers slowly come and go: 34.5… 34…

Then a 20-seater bus pulls up in front of me and an elderly woman gets off. As I’m about to overtake I pause and ask the driver if my bike could squeeze in. He gestures it can.

There are no other passengers on board. The large door at the back allows me to slide it backwards into the narrow aisle. My ticket is NT$28 - less than a buck – and as I sit in the wonderful air-conditioned coolness a sense of smugness comes over me. This is more like it.

It’s short-lived.

After just a few kilometres the bus swings around outside a closed restaurant and the driver signals this is as far as he goes. It’s close to the 25.5 marker. There could be either 4.5 or 9.5 kilometres of uphill left to go.

It’s one o’clock and hotter than ever.

After a short distance - less than half a kilometer - a sign says there are no buses allowed: it seems the road is a bit dangerous. There you go.

For short sections I ride on the wrong side of the road just to be in the shade of overhanging branches.

There are lots of stops during which I swallow some water. As I get to the 20km marker it seems there's still a lot of climbing to do: the surrounding mountains envelope the road. It’s a slow journey and all my water has gone by 3 o’clock.

Then the start of the descent begins.

OK - there are a few small climbs, but by the 19km mark it appears the road will continue mostly downhill, the cool air washes over my torso as my speed picks up, rounding corners and soaking up the vista of jungly terrain, with cicadas making easily as much noise as my tires rolling along on the tarmac.

Rice fields line the route towards the bottom. A gorge appears and the sky becomes overcast.

A small one-street village has a shop where I sit inside with a cold drink and recover for a few minutes.

Fuli looks familiar. Then it all clicks: Debbie and I were here years ago.

The train station clerk says the next train north is at gone 11.00PM and tells me to keep going to Yuli.

A cycle path begins and instead of cycling the intended 197, that’s where I ride.

Over to my left rain is sweeping across the mountains, obscuring the folds. A house’s porch offers shelter, but after a few minutes it seems OK to continue.

Within 10 minutes large drops are hitting the road and I swerve into a farmhouse yard and stand under the overhang of a metal roof as it buckets down. It lasts an hour and it’s almost 6.00PM when I continue north.

Dusk comes.

The cycle route ends frustratingly in a rice field, so I put my head down and grind out the miles on the busy and dark Highway 9, keeping an eye out for signs to Yuli.

The place seems a long time coming. There’s a long bridge to cross.

Once in the actual town center a man on the street points me to the train station, where I manage to get a ticket for the following afternoon's departure, at 2.45. Usually all the seats get sold weeks in advance. My luck is in.

A couple of blocks away is a hotel. The receptionist quotes me NT1,500. It’s much more than it should be and he obviously expects me to haggle, yet it seems too much hassle and I just want to take a shower and get something to eat, so hand over the cash just as the man on the street I just met appears through the door.

His English is good and I tell him about my plan to ride up a nearby mountain to see the fields of yellow flowers which are grown to eat. He was there yesterday and reckons cycling there and back before my afternoon train is a no-no. The hotel clerk confirms it. Getting a taxi is what they suggest and the NT2,000 fare (US$60) the company quotes over the phone for four hours isn’t cheap, but after a minute of thinking about it and whether or not it’s really possible to for me to cycle up there and back I bite the bullet and ask for a cab to pick
me up at 9 o’clock in the morning.

Today's ride: 85 km (53 miles)
Total: 169 km (105 miles)

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