The perks of travelling with young kids: waiting in your hotel room, while all your bags are packed, until breakfast starts at 7:30. Luckily, nobody is hurt at breakfast this morning and we can leave Yilan at 8.
Today was supposed to be the highlight of our trip. Riding through the stunning Taroko Gorge up to Hehuan Wuling, Taiwan’s highest mountain pass at 3,275 meters. The gorge was the epicentre of last month’s heavy earthquake and the road was closed until last week. Not wanting to take any chances we changed our itinerary and skip the gorge and take the longer route upwards to the mountain pass.
We think we have a long six hours drive ahead of us, driving the cross country mountain highway. We’ll cross the land of the indigenous people of Taiwan, the Formosans. We are ready for some impressive vistas of the Taiwanese mountains, and do not know yet that the day would take an unexpected turn.
The drive proceeds slower than expected. The road through the mountains is blocked several times for maintenance. There seem to be many land slides that must be cleared. One time we have to wait for 40 minutes before we can continue our drive. As if six hours in a car was not long enough. Luckily the views on the mountains and the clouds are stunning. We also see many fields with cabbage and fruit trees (we think peach and cherry).
After three hours we arrive at Lishan at a height of 1,950 meters. We take a toilet break, take in the stunning views of the surrounding mountains which are some 3,500 meters high. After we bought some lunch at a convenience store and keep driving to win some minutes after we lost many due to all the waiting at the road blocks, we see a huge landslide on the opposite road. Tim is the first to realise that this is our road. A returning driver confirms that we have to reroute and drive back. This will take way longer than 40 minutes to clean.
So, back in Lishan, we discuss alternatives: we don’t dare to take the obvious alternative road, as Google Maps implies that it’s closed. We don’t want to wait until they open the road again, after the convenience store manager confirms that this may take 1-2 days. We don’t want to go back either… in the meantime, we don’t see that many cars returning to the village, while we saw some tour vans and cars driving towards the blocked road. Where are they?
We are lucky that Tim has eight different navigation apps on his phone, and on his favourite one, organic maps, he finds a secret back road that should lead us to our hotel. We should join the main road past Hehuan Wuling, the highest point of the Taiwanese highway system, which makes us sad, but who knows maybe it’s a short cut and we’ll drive back up the mountain pass. We don’t know what the status of the secret road is, given that the main road already has intense maintenance and many land slides, so carefully but determined we continue our drive.
The road seems fine for the first 30 minutes, but then we are stopped at a junction, we are asked where we are going and when he hears our destination he advises us to return because of recent landslides. We tell him that the main road is blocked, he laughs and wishes us luck. Not very promising….
When we get to the final 15km which should bring us back onto the main road, the road becomes smaller and smaller, and the way up goes steeper and steeper. On one side of the hill the fog is really strong, maybe for the better, so we don’t see the steep way down. On the other side it’s sunny. We have teafields on both sides, the views are stunning. When we have only 5km to go and are almost at the top of the mountain, we see the by now famous sign on the street: road is blocked, we suspect because of another land slide.
There is one last alternative which should bring us to the main road a bit further along. We try the free t alternative road to bring us back to our semi-main road, to not lose all progress. This gamble pays off and the dirt road joins what now feels like a highway after some harrowing turns and bumps. There, we see a monkey, but as Tim is driving, Olga had to take the picture, and the monkey was long gone before she had the camera settings right.
We see many other land slides, luckily none block our road, they are a few days/weeks older and being cleaned up. We conclude it was not our bad luck, but driving through these mountains, in the rain and some weeks after the strong earthquake, is just not a given.
At 16.00, and after some intense driving, turning, steep declines and ways up, Tim manages to get us back on the main road. It’s still a one and a half hours drive to our hotel, but first we take a break at a convenience store along the road. We never have had so much convenience store food on a single day, but we’re just happy that we managed to almost get to the finish line of today’s fierce driving day. At least the children behaved well, singing songs, sleeping, looking at the mountains, and ok… eating a lot of bad food…
We arrive at the hotel at 17:30. Only 30 minutes later then expected, but all the scheduled hikes, scenic spots and bonus views were cancelled. Moreover, the expected breath taking views over Sun Moon Lake are also cancelled, as it’s extremely foggy and already getting dark.
We end our day in a restaurant serving Western food, every evening is a choice between food we like and food the children will eat, tonight we choose for the children. In the bathroom you can hear the microwave beeps and minutes later the food arrives, fitting for a day like this. At least Cleo really enjoyed it and wants to come back tomorrow. We won’t..
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