Scooter Trip - Day 8

Day 8 Hualien - Toroko Gorge - Lishan

As we were leaving the Hostel in Hualien and packing our scoots for the day, we met a Russian fella who was doing the same thing (packing the scooter) and was heading to the same place ( Sun Moon Lake ), along the same road. So we combined forces and set out on this epic day. We had all been to Toroko before, but it is a hard place to just "drive through" so we stopped many times to snap the pics and gape at the landscape. The weather was fairly decent and it had been raining for several days before, so the river was flowing quite furiously.

Here we have Vetelli, giving the sign of peace and good tidings.He was a friendly sorta guy, who spoke excellent Chinese so he was really hand to have around. He also sported a purple rain coat, which added some interest to his look.

In the back round is a landslide which collapsed a concrete road protection structure(thing), so the road was diverted just in front of the landslide. Even as we were there some small rocks were tumbling off the slope onto the side of the road.

At this stage, we had gone up through the Toroko Gorge, and we continuing up the road which itself was going up into the clouds. Was not a comfortable drive, getting colder and damper as we went. Also at this stage it was very scenic and peaceful, but soon we would be in the clouds...

Cliff was just checking to see if there was anything in his teeth. He is very consciousness with his oral Hygiene. Vetelli and I were having a scooter show down. The Russians...

Some time later....and we had emerged from the clouds! I was wearing a dashing vest to reduce my chances of being squashed in the cloudy darkness. It was all worth it though, as it was warmer above the clouds and very bright and sunny. And....there was snow!

This was a big highlight of the trip, and it was a very fortunate thing that we had our Chinese speaking travel companion with us as he managed to talk our way through a police road block. There were requiring people to have snow chains, or winter tyres on their cars to go any further up the road. We had neither, but we convinced the Policeman to allow us through "just to look at the snow" and them come back again. Our intention was to keeping on going over the mountain along the road to the Sun Moon Lake. The ONLY road to the Sun Moon Lake!

Vetelli was way more excited about the snow than we were. And we were excited about it. He kept on stopping to take photos and when we asked him why he was so excited (and we mentioned that we were under the impression there was quite a lot of snow in Russia ) he explained that he had not seen snow in TWO YEARS! And for this reason he was very very happy.

Cliff in the snow, not making a very good snow angel.

Here are the two steeds, up in uncharted territory, pushing the boundaries and living on the cutting edge of high performance scootering.

What happened next was unfortunate. We went as far as we could (and it was really beautiful) when we met yet another road block, which we were stopped at. We came across a guy also on a scooter, who had a snow chain for his back wheel, and he told us it was impossible to go any further! This was due to the fact that the snow came up to his waste, and scooters are not quite built for pushing snow around. So we were in quite a pickle, not having a place to stay and large distance to get back to Hsinchu. We decided to go north, on a road in a valley between the mountains and hope to find a place to stay. The travel guide did not say there was much there, except for some small towns.

Fortunately we found a strange sort of place to stay with Vetelli, and we parted our ways the next morning. He was going to try the road to Sun Moon Lake again the following day. Quite an up and down day (in moods and topography).

Day 9 awaits!