Taipei, beyond the bustle
The road gently snakes through the middle ground where the cranky blue Pacific plays tag with the foot of the steep, soft-serve waves of wooded mountains. The landscape is part Napali Coast of Kauai, part California Highway 1 and part Japanese fishing village. And it’s all made in Taiwan. The perception problem with Taiwan isn’t new: Few Western travelers believe there’s anything beyond the urban bustle and sprawl of Taipei, and the industrial side that seemingly produces more goods than countries 10 times the size.
But the reality is the massive island is mostly forests and grasslands, with great mountain ranges and rift valleys making any east-west road across the middle appear on maps as a tangled fishing line. (There are almost 200 mountain peaks that are more than 10,000 feet in an area the size of Connecticut and New Hampshire combined.)
And nowhere is nature more evident than on the east coast.
Because of the lack of land that can be developed between the mountains and the sea — and because of courageous efforts to prevent development along the wind- and sea-carved shore — the east coast is a string of small towns, fishing villages and former sugar factories that offer an unexpected view of Taiwan. They’re strung together by a well-maintained East Coast Highway (Highway 11) between Taitung and Hualien that offers a lane each for car, scooter and bicycle. (Biking the 112 miles is one of Taiwan’s most popular outdoor adventures.)
While the towering wooded mountains and marble-walled gorge of Taroko National Park are the east coast’s main attraction, other lesser-known features offer a blend of culture, calm and scenery that is overlooked by U.S. travelers. What follows are some sites travelers would find on a Highway 11 road trip down Taiwan’s rugged, sleepy east coast.