A bit before last summer, not having any summer plans yet, we came across a video called something like "Taiwan KOM, the world's hardest climb". After seeing it I said "we should do it sometime". And the response I got was "what if we do it this summer?". We checked for flight tickets, which were not expensive at all, and from one day to another we had plans for the summer. What we also had was a lot of planning ahead. And a lot of questions too: should we bring our bikes? which route should we follow? should we book hotels in advanced? how many days do we have?
We had done some bike trips before, but it was our first time with so many uncertainties. Riding in Spain and France was easy. We took our bikes with us in the camper or by train, we perfectly knew the roads, the distances from one place to another and how much time we would need to get from A to B every day. Taiwan was a different story, so we started reading and reading, and started to make decisions.
Bringing our bike was risky and expensive, so renting was the proper way to go. Taiwan has one of the best rental bike systems in the world. Giant has a huge net of shops all over the place and you can even pick the bike in one city and return it in a different city at no extra charge. A few emails here and there and the bikes were all sorted out. They were also giving us bike tools and rear bike bags together with the bikes, so we didn't have to worry about that.
Pic. 1: 'Our' Giant bikes were great value for money
We originally wanted to cycle from Taipei to the south of the isle all along the west coast, then go up the east coast till Hualien and finally climb the Taroko to end our trip in Sun Moon Lake. That would have taken us around 10-12 days being optimistic. Unfortunately we couldn't do it. We have some friends living in Taiwan and wanted to spend a few days with them, and we also had a few originally unexpected family matters to attend in late August, so we needed to shorten our bike tour.
We finally stayed in Taiwan for 10 days, 4 of which were cycling days from Taitung to Sun Moon Lake. A total of 370 km with 6100 m of altitude gain. With this route we covered a good amount of the east coast, which is the best part of Taiwan; the Taroko climb, which was the reason why we started planning this trip; and Sun Moon Lake, which we thought was a "must" visit.
The east coast is truly nice. Views of the sea at one side and green huge mountains at the other is an impressive scenery. On the down side, there are very few places where to stay or stop for something to drink/eat along the way. Given this and that we only had 4 days, one of which was a huge climbing day, we thought the best was to set in advanced the start and end points of each journey, also trying to make sure that we would be able to cover those distances and altitude gains in a single day while at the same time having time to enjoy our journey.
From our trip to Barcelona we knew that we could cover some 90 km and 1500 m altitude gain per day without taking any risk. That was our starting point when we started drawing our route. In our opinion, it is very important to have this kind of information about yourself when you start planning a trip like this. If you are going for a longer trip or don't care about getting to a final destination, then this kind if knowledge is not as important, but for our 4-day trip it was essential.
At this point, our planning was looking pretty good. Flight tickets: check. Rental bikes: check. Route: check. What to bring with us?
We tend to bring few things with us to all our trips, no matter if bike trips or "normal" trips. I kind of hate people that pack clothes and shoes every time they go for holidays like if they were moving out. When you travel by bike, being a "light luggage person" is an advantage. We needed bike clothes (two jerseys each and a bib-short each), rain jacket, cycling shoes, normal light shoes, a couple of shorts each and 3x t-shirts each. Of course you need to add the underwear and socks as basics. We planned to buy some liquid detergent on arrival and handwash our bib-shorts and jerseys after every cycling journey, as well as the t-shirts, socks and underwear.
As complements, we also packed cycling glasses, helmets (this is a must), a couple of cycling caps (which actually saved our lives, more on this later), cleat pedals for the rental bikes, a couple of water bottles, sun cream, toiletries, a couple of GPS cycling computers (one Sigma ROX12 and one Xplova X5 Evo), two powerful Sigma bike lights and a Xiaomi Yi action camera.
Pic. 2: This was all our luggage
You may be thinking that the cycling shoes and cleat pedals are non-essential, and you might be right. The main reason why we took them was because of the Taroko climb. Cleats usually help you climb better because they allow you to pull during the up-stroke, so we thought they would be of great help for such a demanding climb. We're so used to cleats too, that cycling without them feels kind of weird. Last reason is, we thought we would anyway need to bring two pair of shoes, because Taiwan is a rainy and very humid place, and wearing wet shoes is not the best thing in the world.
There's more about the cycling shoes. In our multiple sources of information, we repeatedly read that because of the rain and the humid weather, they recommended open shoes for riding. We were a bit puzzled: "Open shoes? How are we supposed to ride with open shoes? If only sandals with cleats existed..." We did a quick Google search: "Sandals with cleats', and to our surprise they actually exist. So, there we went to buy two pair of sandals with cleats, one for each.
Pic. 3: Testing the sandals and ourselves before the trip
Flight day was getting closer and everything was set up. There was nothing to worry about. That's what we thought. 10 days before the departure date we saw some news about a tropical storm originated in Philippines and heading towards Taiwan. It was not too strong and we still had 10 days, so we didn't pay much attention to it. Our friends in Taiwan told us this kind of storms are very normal over there every summer and nothing happens. 5 days before departure, the storm was still approaching Taiwan in like slow motion while getting bigger. 3 days before departure the storm was upgraded to a typhoon and meteorological predictions were pretty discouraging. Our friends started to get concerned about us being able to make it there on the planned date. We started to get nervous. The departure day the typhoon was upgraded to super typhoon.
Pic. 4: The typhoon Lekima was heading exactly the same way we were
Our flight was delayed for 12 hours, but not from the beginning, but at our stop in Paris. We originally had a 5-hour layover in Paris, but with the 12-hour delay, we had 17 hours in Paris, so we decided to go visit the city. Bus tickets from the airport to the city centre in Paris are freaking expensive, but anyway. After a nap in the airport, as it was still quite early in the morning, we went for a walk and a nice lunch with some friends who live there.
Pic. 5: Airport nap
Back in the airport we were obsessively looking for information about Lekima. It had weakened back to typhoon level and it had changed direction a bit, veering north. It looked like we were in good luck. The flight departed on time (I mean, on time considering the 12-hour delay), and our flight was a quiet flight. Landing was maybe a bit bumpier than normal, but not much. We were finally in Taiwan and our adventure was ready to start. But... "should we keep our initial plan?"
The last train to Taitung, where we should be starting out bike trip, had already left. If we went the day after, moving everything a day in our schedule was a bit painful, as it meant losing one day. We checked and rechecked the train timetable. There was a train at 5:00 in the morning from Taipei to Taitung. If we caught that train, we could still start our trip on the planned day, even if that meant waking up very early and start riding later than desired. Sometimes you need to be quite flexible if you want things to work out.
We went to the train station. We could not buy the tickets in advanced because all the tickets with an arranged seat were sold out. They advised to go to the station just before the train departure and buy the tickets on the spot. At this point, the best we could do was to go for good dinner, get some good rest and hope everything went well the day after.
Pic. 6: Dinner was delicious
Next morning we woke up even earlier than needed. We were so excited that we couldn't sleep any longer. Jet-lag possibly played quite an important role here too. We got ready and went to the train station. We bought some breakfast in our way. Fortunately there were still some free spots in the early train to Taitung, even if no seat for us. No problem. We just seated (and even slept) between two wagons. The trip was about to start.
Pic. 7: Right in front the train station in Taipei. A good omen.