A long way on lonely coastal road - Daren
Trip Start
Nov 06, 2006
1
51
106
Trip End
Dec 31, 2008
Daren, Taiwan
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Total distance: 30 km
Altitude up: 150m
Altitude down: 150m
At 6:45am I am on the road to Daren, the village where road No.9 leaves the coast to cross over to Pintung. My maps shows a dotted line, which may continue along the coast. I am not sure what the 'dotted' line means, perhaps 'in planning', or 'dirt road'. At the police staion I ask and they tell me that there is no road and confirm it by a phone call to the sister station in Dawu. The places here in the South get more and more lonely. It will be a hot day and as the sun risis in the East it's already hot at 8:00am in the morning, luckily the wind blows a bit. Still I take cover under my umbrella. It is time that I get to Kenting to reach at least the mosr southern point as the heat will just get worse. It is really a lonely stretch, very few small villages, many abandoned places, no tourist attractions and no coffee shops, just coastal landscape. I walk through a fishing village where they are just unloading big seized ocean fishes. Daren turns out to be a lonely place with nothing going on and difficult to find a place to stay. So I take the bus back to Jinluen and say " Hello, I am back for the second night " to the landlord of the Spa hotel where I stayed last night. Then I wash clothes, have late lunch, walk to the Dawu Mountain Education Center, this time with more time than 8 minutes to spare. I also see a video about the Dawu area. Today a vey pretty young Paiwan lady who speaks some English helps me in the museum. I learn that the Dawu Nature Reserve is the last area with original forest in lower and mid-range elevations. The later afternoon I spend doing this and that and in the evening I soak in the hot spa, where at first a group of about 15 people sits in the big pool or sings KTV. In the evening I walk through the village, where people are doing what they usually do in these villages in the evenings: Sing KTV, sit in groups of neighbors talking or in this case a group of the village ladies is practicing a dance. Before going to bed I have a chat with the landlord, who is not from here, but from Kaoshiung. He liked the place and built this place. Somehow I have the feeling he would prefer to move back to Kaoshiung.
