Scooter Trip - Day 2

Day 2! Ilan to Hualien.

We woke up in our swanky hotel room with the memory of yesterdays wet, cold day of scootering still fresh in our minds, to a beautiful sunny warm morning. Here is the view from our hotel room, looking towards the sea over the flooded rice fields reflecting the sky.

I REALLY enjoyed the warm and sunshine after the previous day, and we saw some interesting locations for houses amongst the rice fields:

It was really nice after Ilan, with mountains and the coast surrounding a very flat sort of plain full of farms and small houses.

Our plan for today was to drive from Ilan down to Hualien, stopping and seeing whatever interesting things there were to see along the way. The road stayed close to the coastline for most of the day, but might have been the busiest and most crowded road of the whole trip. The highway from Taipei heading south ends after Ilan, so suddenly the main road we were riding along became a lot busier and congested and for a while we actually thought there must have been an accident up along the road because of the slow moving traffic. Scooter advantage! No need to stick with traffic jams!

As you can see:many cars going south - and not many going north! We stopped at a 711 to get some munchies and stuff and we met three cyclists going north. Felt incredibly lazy saying we were just scootering around Taiwan a bit, after hearing their ambitious plans. They were foreigners and almost by default are teaching English. We had a good chat, one of the guys was 196cm tall (I asked him) which means that in basically every conversation he has in Taiwan his height and skinny stature will come up! Poor guy.

I like dogs, but I also like cats. And usually I like most cats. But I met a cat I did not like, and I told Cliff the moment I saw the smelly dirty flea infested specimen of a cat, that I did not like that cat.

So we had something to drink and chatted with the cyclists and then shock and horror the darn cat decides it is going to have a nap of my scooter seat. There were MANY scooters seats outside that 7/11, and it had to choose MINE. Here is the offending critter:

So we pretty much just continued heading south until we arrived at Toroko National Park. There are some famous cliffs just north of Toroko, where the road goes in and out of tunnels along the cliff edge, which makes for some fun scootering.

We pulled into The Toroko National Park quickly before we went into Hualien, and we visited these sweet little temples on the mountain side.

And then there was day three...