Home » All, Northern Coast 3-Day Trip, Taiwan

Dolphin-Watching at Wushih Harbor, Taiwan (Day 1 of 3)

Submitted by on July 21, 2012 – 4:13 pm
Dolphin-Watching Boat

I went to type out the date for this journal entry, and I was stumped at the year. Was it 2015? 2016? I had trouble remembering for a while. That’s how tired I am this morning after the adventures of yesterday.

I was up early yesterday morning – at 5:00 a.m. – in order to get a jump on the day. I wanted to be on the road by at least 6. Despite my best efforts, it took me until 6:20. When you get out of the habit of weekend trips, it takes a while to relearn how to go about them. All the little things I needed to take care of just took a long time – right down to putting on sunscreen. Looking in the mirror at the end of yesterday, I got a vivid picture of how poorly I had accomplished that last task. Every spot that I had missed with the sunscreen was bright lobster red – the bit around my watch strap, the area just next to my hairline, and a spot on both elbows.

I wanted to be on the road early to beat the heat and to beat the traffic. The position of the sun annoys me just slightly every morning when I leave for work at 8:00 a.m. It feels to my body like it is early in the morning, but the sun never seems to know that. At 8:00 a.m., the sun is already high in the sky, much higher than it has any right to be – closer to noon on my dial than morning. It’s a constant reminder of how much of the day I’ve already missed before I’ve even left my apartment. Even at 6:20 when I finally stumbled down the stairs of my apartment and out into the deserted alley, the sun was far higher and stronger than I wanted it to be. I think you’d need a 4:00 a.m. wake-up time in order to be out the door at cool sunrise.

Packing was a problem as always. I guess I just have unrealistic expectations. I want to have super-light bags. But in my world, that is an impossibility. I like my gadgets and cameras, and I like to be independent. So, I COULD leave behind all my toiletries. I’ll be staying in a hotel and they will probably supply everything I need, but I have to bring my own soap, shampoo, and toothbrush anyway. I want to have my own and be independent if necessary. I COULD bring nothing but a change of clothes, but I want to take pictures, so I need my camera. So I have to bring a minimum amount of stuff. I know that. Still, I’m always unhappy when I hoist my bags and feel their weight. And it’s not just the weight. It’s the bother. I have no choice but to carry two bags. I need my daypack for my camera and maps, etc. And I need my backpack for everything else. And that backpack has to be left behind when I park my scooter. So how is that accomplished? I strap my backpack to the backseat area of my scooter. That actually works out surprisingly well. My scooter has a tiny backrest at the very back for a passenger, my backpack nestles against it nicely. When the backpack is full, it even gives me, the driver, a nice backrest. When quite empty as it was yesterday (no camping equipment), it doesn’t provide a backrest and hangs quite limply, but it still fits there nicely. I strap it in place with two long bungee chords and off I go. My daypack fits between my feet on the footrest giving me easy access to my camera and maps. It’s a good system. For security, this time I brought along one of my long bike lock cables. It isn’t perfect, but I figured I could wrap it around my backpack, through the handle and the backrest and lock it. Somebody could still easily slice through the handle with a knife and wiggle the backpack out and free, but just the sight of the lock might deter a casual thief. And it is the casual thief I’m worried about. I doubt a pro would look twice at my ratty old backpack in full daylight. And even if they did, a cable wouldn’t deter them when they could just slice through the canvas of the bag to begin with to get at the contents!

Off I went, and the streets were as empty as I could have hoped. I breezed through the big and wide empty streets with the customary stop for an eternity at every third traffic light. I can never seem to time the lights in Taipei. No matter how fast you drive, it simply can’t be done.

I followed Zhongshan (which then turns into Roosevelt) all the way to the southern end of Taipei. By the time Roosevelt has left Taipei, it has long since turned into Highway 9 which can be followed all the way to the coast at Toucheng via Pingling. At Toucheng, you could turn right and follow Highway 9 south to Yilan and then all the way to Hualien along the coast, where it suddenly turns inland and follows the rift valley to Taitung, where it rejoins the coast and goes almost to Kenting. I’d be a bit annoyed if I were Highway 9. If it were extended just a bit farther, it could claim to go all the way from Taipei in the north to Kenting in the south. As it is, it leaves the coast just shy of Kenting and then cuts across the southern tip of Taiwan and ends at Fenggang. For some reason, Highway 26 gets the honor of the last little chunk between Fenggang and Kenting and the southern tip of Taiwan.

I, however, wasn’t going south. I was going north, and when, after two hours of glorious scootering through the mountains and a coffee stop in beautiful Pinglin, I zigzagged out of the mountains down to Toucheng, I left Highway 9 and turned north to follow Highway 2 to Wushih Harbor. Wushih Harbor, as I knew from a previous trip a few years ago, is the jumping off point for dolphin-watching boat tours. On my first trip, I enjoyed the boat trip around Turtle Island and out into the ocean immensely, but we saw no dolphins. Our only encounter with nature was the occasional sight of a flying fish. A friend of mine had recently taken one of these dolphin-watching tours and had seen lots of dolphins (at least he had pictures of lots of them), and that gave me the idea to head this way and try my luck again. Second time lucky as the say.

The second time you do anything is always interesting. A lot of the details are already taken care of. The first time, I knew nothing. I had no idea where the dolphin boats left from and it took me a long time to track down the harbor. And once there, it was a bit of an adventure figuring out how to buy a ticket and then find the boat and all the rest of it. Everything was a surprise and a challenge.

[slickr-flickr tag=”TCC Dolphin Watching” border=”on” flickr_link=”on”]

This time, I had it pretty much dialed in. I knew exactly where the harbor was, and I drove straight there. I knew that there was a very large Visitor Information Center and it was possible to go to a counter there and buy a ticket from very friendly and helpful people. It’s also air-conditioned inside, and it was a huge relief to have that cold air hit my face after the brutal sun. Not surprisingly, it was the final bit from Toucheng to the harbor that was the toughest. Up in the mountains, it was much cooler. There was, in fact, a lot of cloud cover and even some sprinkling of rain. The mountains of Taiwan have an uncanny ability to take clear blue sky and suck the clouds and rain out of them. But once I came down out of the mountains and found myself on the coast, the clouds broke, the sun came out, and the struggle with traffic lights began again. The sweat began to pour from my body and by the time I reached the doors of the Visitor Information Center, I was a wreck. My t-shirt was as soaked as if I had just climbed out of the harbor water after a good long swim to Turtle Island and back. And, to add injury to discomfort, a very large bee had slammed into my shoulder, bounced off and hit my arm, and stung me in both places. How the creature could possibly react that fast, I have no idea, but it hurt!

One of the reasons I had left so early was that I wanted to catch an early morning boat. I thought there might be boats at 9:00 a.m. From signs I saw scattered around the harbor, the early boats had left at 8:30 and I had missed those. That wasn’t a problem though. The next boats left at 10:00 a.m. and I bought a ticket for one of those. That gave me a solid hour to relax, hit the bathroom, wander around, take some pictures, and otherwise get in the mood for dolphins.

I asked, but I never did find out, what the difference was between buying your ticket at the Visitor Information Center and buying it from one of the tables set up around the harbor. The woman at the VIC didn’t ask me what kind of boat I wanted. She simply signed me up. (NT$1,000 for a 3-4 hour tour.) That was fine with me. Whatever was easiest. The only question was whether I wanted to visit Turtle Island or not. To do that, one needs a permit, and I hadn’t applied for permission, so that was off the table. In any event, I preferred to go dolphin-watching. Our boat did both. We dropped people off on Turtle Island and then picked them up on our way back. People, however, had to choose one or the other.

The last time I did this, there was a LOT of chaos and confusion. The boat was on the far side of the harbor and large crowds were heaving and struggling around the one narrow plank onto the boat. There was much shouting and pushing. People were even getting onto the wrong boat in large groups and then being shouted at until they got off again. This time was completely different. The woman who had sold me my ticket came out from behind her counter and addressed all the waiting people. She referred to a list in her hand and called out the names of groups of people until everyone going on this boat was organized. Then we followed her right across the street to a very large boat that was waiting. We filed on in quiet single file – the first onboard rushing into the interior to get the air conditioned seats – and we each were handed a new and sleek life vest to put on. I was reminded by my friendly guide from the VIC that I was NOT to get off at Turtle Island. That was for the few who had permission. She took this piece of advice very seriously, as if life and death hung in the balance, and now it makes me think of the classic line from Apocalypse Now – Never get off the boat.

The boat, as I said, was quite large and it sliced through the harbor waters with power and speed. Once we left the sheltered harbor, I was reminded once again at just how big the ocean is. Our boat might have been quite large, but it was still just a cork as far as the ocean was concerned, and we heaved up and down like a roller coaster as we went over the ocean swells. The few people who joined me at the very front point of the bow gave little shrieks of delight at the motion. These shrieks, I noticed, soon tapered off. Next I looked around, I saw pools of vomit scattered around and many people holding the supplied (and numerous) plastic bags to their mouths. One poor teenage girl was hanging over the front railing with vomit in her hair and down her arms and legs. Even with their combined effort, her mother and two friends could not get her arms unhooked from the railing and convince her to go back to a seat. It seemed really dangerous to me. The bow was rising and falling dramatically and this girl didn’t have the strength to stand. It was impossible, in fact, to stand there without holding onto the railing. I would have helped, but there was no way I could have cut through the language barrier to be useful. In any event, official staff of the boat – in crisp blue uniforms – had been made aware of the situation. To my surprise, instead of joining forces to help the poor girl inside, the staff member left and returned with a bucket of water to help the girl clean herself up. This seemed a risky thing to do right there at the front where a slip could have sent her under the railing and into the ocean, but this was the process I guess. After she had sort of cleaned herself up, some other staff came up and they all helped her to a seat. Then the bucket of water she’d used to wash herself off with was splashed onto the deck of the boat to clean up the rest of the vomit. I felt such sympathy for this poor girl. I know from one or two experiences how debilitating seasickness can be. It’s awful, and all you want is for the boat to reach shore. Yet, this was the very beginning of the trip, and this girl had nearly 3 hours of seasickness to endure before we’d return to shore. To my extreme surprise, she didn’t even move inside to one of the comfortable seats in the air conditioned cabin. She didn’t even sit in the shade. This poor girl sat down in a plastic chair near the front of the boat in the full blaze of the sun, and she sat there, her head lolling, occasionally vomiting into a plastic bag, for the duration of the trip. The woman I took to be her mother came by from time to time and talked to her, but the girl didn’t have the strength to respond and she never moved. I stayed out in the sun by choice because I like being outside in the wind and able to see everything. But it was brutally hot. I have no idea why this girl didn’t move inside or why nobody thought to move her. Perhaps it was because she wasn’t unique. All over the ship were victims of seasickness. They sat in plastic chairs over the deck of ship looking listless, only occasionally moving enough just to lift the plastic bag to their mouths and give a little spasm as more vomit trickled out. I wondered if they knew they were susceptible to seasickness. If so, they were brave to come out on this trip. More likely is that they had no idea and had come out on this boat with no idea what was in store for them. I doubt they’ll ever get on a boat again after that experience.

Once or twice in my life, I’ve felt the stirring of seasickness. I’ve just fought through it and tried to hold it off with deep breathing and staring fixedly at the horizon. This time I was lucky and I felt not even a twinge despite the wild heavings at the front of the boat and the smell of vomit around me. I think it was because of the sheer interest of the trip. For the first part of the trip, I had Turtle Island to keep me engaged as I watched it getting larger and larger on the horizon. I was taking pictures and fiddling with settings on my camera, and it took all the strength I had in my arms and legs to hold myself steady while holding the camera. All of this focus and energy probably gave seasickness no chance to get a hold on my brain and stomach. I snapped away with my new Nikon D7000, realizing only afterwards that once again I’d lost track of the camera settings and taken all the pictures at the wrong settings. It’s a great camera, but I still have no idea what I’m doing with it.

We went around Turtle Island slowly starting on the side with the beautiful high cliffs. Once we went all the way around, we went in to a dock and dropped off the hikers who had permission to land. I was surprised when about half the boat’s passengers got off. Then we left in search of dolphins.

I had been looking for dolphins all this time, but I know now that I might as well have saved my eyes the effort. It’s not like the dolphins just show up out of the blue and swim around the boat. We have to actually go find them and that doesn’t happen until after we leave Turtle Island. So as the boat goes from the harbor to Turtle Island, the whole point is to enjoy the scenery of the island. No dolphin is going to show up there. They are out in the more open waters of the ocean, and we have to go find them. I read somewhere that they send scout boats out in the morning to locate the dolphin pods and then give that information to the boats as a rough area to start. I’m not sure why the dolphin pods are there. I assume they are feeding, but I don’t know that for sure. And if they are feeding, one wonders if the boats bother them. My boat wasn’t, after all, the only boat out there. And new boats would be coming out all day long every day for months. It makes sense that this would disrupt their feeding and start to annoy them a bit. Then again, you have to give the dolphins some credit. They’re not stupid and they could swim away if they wanted and find other feeding grounds (maybe). And, though I couldn’t understand what the guide was saying over the loudspeakers, I got the impression that the boat captain and the staff of the dolphin-watching company were aware of this concern. They seemed to be gentle in their approach to the dolphin pod and there seemed to be rules about how you could approach them and for how long you could stay with them before you had to break away. The boat didn’t, for example, just steam into the middle of the dolphin pod and blunder around. Once we spotted a pod, we approached it from an angle and then kind of veered away and left it behind. This almost seemed like an invitation to the dolphins to come and play. Some of the dolphins took us up on the invitation and fifteen or twenty of them would be swimming in the bow wave of the boat and looking for all the world like they were having fun. The bulk of the dolphin pod would still be out there but at something of a distance. And then it felt like we could have stayed out there for hours amongst the dolphins and they would have stayed around us. However, after what felt like a reasonable amount of time, our guide announced that we were leaving. He said “Bye-bye” over the loudspeakers and the boat picked up speed and left them behind.

This was the first time I’ve had such long contact with dolphins from a boat. I’ve seen them from time to time – on one memorable occasion I saw a pod of hundreds of them on my boat from Green Island back to Taiwan. But they were relatively far away. This was my first time on an actual dolphin-watching boat, and the experience was full of surprises.

The first surprise I’ve already mentioned – how we had to go find the dolphins. I always had this image of dolphins just racing toward boats and then frolicking in the bow wave. That does happen, but it’s not like the ocean is teeming with dolphins everywhere and you just have to zoom around in your boat. No, the organizers already had some idea of where various pods of dolphins were located. Then we went in that direction while experts up in the ship’s cabin were scanning the ocean for telltale signs. I assume one sign would be birds. If birds were feeding, it’s likely there is a school of fish, and where this is a school of fish, there would be dolphins. A much easier sign is probably just a dolphin jumping out of the water. They do this all the time apparently, and if you know what you are looking for and have a good set of binoculars, you can spot the telltale flash of white/grey and the splash from quite a long distance away. I could feel the boat suddenly change direction again and again and it was in response to nothing that I could see. Then other boat passengers started to cry out and point. They had spotting something too, but try as I might I saw nothing. My eyes started to water from the strain, but I saw nothing for a long time. Then I finally saw my first dolphin or two slicing through the water. Once I saw the first one or two, it was like my eyes were opened and the ocean seemed to be filled with them. I saw dolphins everywhere I looked. I have no idea why I hadn’t seen them before then. If I had to guess, I’d say it was because the simple motion of the dolphin breaking the surface of the water to take a quick breath created a little ripple in the water that could easily be mistaken for just another wave. Once you realize what you are looking at, you suddenly see dolphins everywhere.

Another big surprise was that in order for us to interact with the dolphins, the boat slowed down. I understood that dolphins could outrace any kind of boat. And maybe they can, but they seem to like it better when the boat has throttled back and is moving more slowly. At full speed, we didn’t attract many dolphins. Once we slowed down, they crowded around the front of the boat and zoomed around.

I had to wonder about my feeding theory for the dolphin pod. If they were out there feeding, then why were they jumping out of the water like that? I couldn’t believe the speed of them either when they spun. I guess I’m used to animal shows on TV and they slow things down for you. In real life when one of those dolphins jumped out of the water and spun like a drill, it was lightning fast. They must have accomplished six revolutions before they hit the water again. It was too fast for my eyes to follow and my brain to process. And if the dolphins are feeding, wouldn’t these exuberant jumps and flips and splashes disturb the school of fish they’re feeding on?

So, I had no idea what the dolphins were doing or what they were thinking, but I was well aware of what a privilege it was to see them. I just wish I could have slowed down the experience and relished it. The dolphins were very fast and the groups of them would spin and dodge and zip around in front of the boat so fast that I could barely follow them. I also realized what an effort it must take to take good pictures of them. I tried to focus on a couple of them, but it was impossible from my perspective – high up on the bow of this large boat. Besides, I didn’t want to spend all my time trying to take pictures of the dolphins and miss the experience of actually being there. I’m only too well aware of how that can happen. Instead, I shot some video and left it at that. Even video was hard to do. With video, you have to use live view and watch the action on the camera’s LCD screen. I have one of the better cameras on the market, but even with it, I can’t see anything on the viewscreen. It’s just too bright out there on the ocean. So all I could do was point the camera in the general direction of the dolphins and hope for the best. It would be better to be able to look through the viewfinder, but digital SLRs don’t work that way. (I checked later, and I found that I did get one nice 15-second clip of the dolphins swimming and that is more than enough.)

I have to say that I have no idea what kind of dolphins we saw. My brochure lists seven different varieties and how to tell them apart. However, I couldn’t focus on these details while I was watching them in the water. They came and went far too fast. I think once you get used to the differences, you could spot them easily. But for your first time, you kind of get caught up in the emotion of the moment. I kept thinking, “Dolphins! Dolphins! Dolphins!” instead of seeing what kind of snout shape and fin shape they had. I think we are so inundated with stories about environmental problems and the extinction of species and how the human race is destroying the planet that it actually comes as a complete surprise at some level to see even one dolphin swimming freely in the ocean let alone hundreds of them.

Getting back to shore was a bit of a procedure. We had to stop at Turtle Island to pick up the hikers we’d left behind. Apparently there was a schedule for that and we were a bit early, so we puttered around in the ocean just killing time. I felt sorry for the seasick passengers. They must have been just screaming inside at the captain to get them back to shore. Meanwhile, we just puttered slowly around heaving up and down on the ocean waves. When it was finally time to head to the dock to pick up the hikers, not all of them had returned. There was a tremendous amount of yelling back and forth between the coast guard on the island and head guide on the boat. It was clear that not everyone was accounted for. A young guy in the blue dolphin-watching uniform went sprinting up the trail to find the stragglers. Meanwhile, other boats had lined up behind us, and we had to leave the dock to let them pick up their passengers. It got to be a bit of a circus as we circled and circled out there on the ocean and waited for our lost hikers. By that point, I had been out on the ocean long enough, too, and I was hoping that the stragglers were going to get a good verbal whipping when they finally showed up. In the end, I don’t think we ever found them. They were still out there whooping it up on Turtle Island for some reason, and an arrangement was made for another boat to take them back to shore and we left – much to the relief, I’m sure, of the half dozen people I still saw quietly and hopelessly vomiting into their plastic bags.

 

Once on shore, I hopped on my scooter and continued my drive up the coast. I didn’t have a particular goal. I had vague ideas of spending the night in Fulong – a place where I knew there were reasonably-priced hotels – and that is where I did finally end up. It was a pleasant though hot ride. I stopped at half a dozen places to get off my scooter and go walking along the ocean to take pictures. The biggest stop was at a place called the Beiguan Tidal Park. They had trails there, and I walked along snapping pictures.

As anyone who has spent time on the coastal highways knows, driving your scooter there means dealing with trucks. I have no idea where all these trucks are going or what they are all carrying, but there are a lot of them. They thunder along without a care in the world and after a while, they can get a bit irksome. I was enjoying my drive along the ocean, but I was also glad to finally arrive in Fulong and get off the road.

Fulong is a big beach town in Taiwan. It’s one of the closest beaches to Taipei and it can be reached by train, so it’s a popular place in summer. I’d passed by a number of times, but I don’t think I’d ever spent the night there before. I don’t think I’d ever even see the beach itself.

My first stop was the large and helpful visitor center. I knew they could help me find a place to stay. That was preferable to just driving around and being told that everyplace was full. They were quite helpful and they made a phone call and found a place that had a single room for NT$1,000. It was right downtown just a block or two away and I went off to check it out. NT$1,000 is a fairly typical price for a hotel like that, and I had no problem agreeing to the room once I saw it. To be honest, I’d be happier with a much more basic place for a third of that price, but that kind of thing doesn’t seem to exist in Taiwan.

There were, in the end, two problems with this room. One was the bed. Beds in Taiwan are typically quite hard and I’m somewhat used to that. The mattress in my apartment is quite hard. However, even within that there is a range, and this hotel had the super-hard concrete mattresses and I just could not fall asleep. My long night was essentially a gymnastics course as I flipped over and over again trying to get comfortable. Perhaps I was unconsciously imitating the dolphins I’d seen. The second problem was the traffic noise. The truck traffic on the coastal highway does not end once the sun goes down. If anything, it increases. Certainly the speed of the trucks increases and my hotel is right on the main drag through Fulong. Forget that we are talking about the main road through the downtown core of a small beach tourist town. The truck drivers will go through at 100 km/hr if they can get away with it. And at night, apparently, they can. I eventually had to resort to ear plugs, but even they weren’t much help. I think truck noises are, psychologically speaking, more than just noises. In our urban world, traffic noise is ingrained in us as a dangerous noise. Cavemen might have instinctively feared the roar of the saber-tooth tiger. Modern humans fear the noise of the transport truck – it’s death on 18 wheels for us, and I think hearing that noise makes us tense up and a bit of adrenaline squirts into our veins. When that noise goes on day and night non-stop just feet away from where you are lying in bed trying to sleep, I think it wears you out. I’m sitting in a 7-11 right now at a window that faces the main street. The trucks have been thundering past all morning and I can feel my heart racing. The trucks are literally only fifteen away from me. There’s not much that can be done about it, though. I don’t think there is enough room in Taiwan for the construction of bypasses and that sort of thing. Towns like Fulong just have to put up with it. It doesn’t seem to bother the Taiwanese, though. At least, they never mention it. There just seems to be a much higher tolerance for noise in general. I guess when you grow up with it, it just becomes the norm.

My plan for today was to continue driving up the coast and exploring here and there along the coast. I’m starting to re-think that plan, though. I’m not sure I want to deal with those trucks all day long. I could just stay in Fulong for another night and explore this area. That might be the better plan. I think I’ll do that. See if I can keep my room for another night. It will give me a chance to see the main beach here. I tried to go to the Fulong Beach yesterday, but to my surprise the place is not that easy to get to. It looked like I could just walk down the road from my hotel and pop onto the beach, but I couldn’t. I found myself facing two large and locked gates. I had to retrace my steps and then walk back to the Visitor Information Center. From there, you walk to quite a large gate with turnstiles. It turns out you have to pay NT$80 to get in. I thought that was weird. And then I was told that there wasn’t much point my buying a ticket because the beach was closing at 5:30 anyway! It was 5:00, and I was looking forward to strolling along the beach, taking a quick swim and then digging my toes into the sand while the sun went down – the perfect relaxing end to a good day. However, that was not to be. I could get annoyed at that. Who ever heard of a beach closing at 5:30? However, I’ve been in Taiwan long enough to know that it’s par for the course. If you want to have adventures and watch the sun go down on a beach and then have your boat break down in the dark and end up floating on the ocean, you go to the Philippines. Taiwan is not that kind of place. There is a tendency here to control things. You just have to accept that and try to work with it. (I learned later that I might have misunderstood. It’s possible that the rule is that you just can’t SWIM after 5:30. You’re still allowed on the beach. You just can’t be in the water.)

Since I was too late to go onto Fulong Beach, I worked my way backwards and found a strip of beach that I COULD walk along. Of course, there were signs everywhere saying that swimming was forbidden. Being an unsupervised beach, swimming was not allowed. The interesting thing was that about two hundred people were in the water and swimming and surfing anyway. I walked along this stretch of sand snapping pictures of Fulong Beach across the river. While I was there hanging out, I suddenly heard a piercing barrage of whistles – the lifeguards at Fulong Beach were marshalling the people out of the water.

 

Dragon Boat Festival Taipei - 2012
Exploring Fulong Beach (Day 2 of 3)

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