Time: 11:02pm
Location: TaitungWeather: rain 6C (!)
Stumbling across the campground in the pouring rain last night, I was given a spot under an awning to set up my bivy and offered the warmest welcome by the other guests camping there who kept on offering me food and insisting that I would be too cold. Apparently it hasn't been this cold in many years , and okay it definitely wasn't tshirt shorts weather anymore, but I was fine in my down sleeping bag.
I chatted with some other cycle tourists and other car campers until almost 11:30pm before going to bed and left around 8:30am this morning. People repeated told me that it would be very hilly for the first part of the ride but the hills were really nothing and I found it very enjoyable despite the rain. With far and few cars along the narrow road, it was just me and the mountains, well and the occasional monkey. I got up to Shouka in just over an hour, which is an old checkpoint and the highest point of the Southern Cross Highway. The next 11km was an exhilarating coast down but left my feet and hands numb from the cold, the first time that's happened in Taiwan! I took a quick break at the 7-11 down the hill, the biggest gap between 7-11s that I've encountered, and met some other cyclists from China going the other direction who had the same rental bike as me.
Wishing them well on the rest of their journey, I rode off to meet the ocean again, and 30ish kilometers later, took a lunch break at Jinlun. Back on coastal Highway 26, it was gently rolling and a headwind but not nearly as bad as yesterday, so maybe it is better to throw yourself into the water to start with sometimes. The sky was an ominous grey but the water was still a brilliant turquoise blue. For the last part of the ride today I rode a bit with another Chinese cyclist into Taitung City, never mind that we both look like we'd had a mud bath.
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