Taiwan: Scooting Around Kenting

On the next-to-last day of our Taiwan trip, Nana and I rented a scooter (thanks to some help from our hosts, the Surf Shack in Hengchun) so we could tootle around Kenting National Park, at the very southern tip of Taiwan. It was a team effort: Nana handled the negotiations, and I handled the driving.

All in all, it was a great day. We spend the morning at the National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium (yes, it's a mouthful). Tucked away on a near-deserted stretch of the Hengchun Peninsula coastline, the place is actually a sprawling, world-class aquarium.

The forecourt area had a bunch of wading pools for splashing around in--deserted mostly, on an off-season weekday.

We were lucky enough to arrive at feeding time, so we got to see a lot of the fish in action.

Including the star attraction: a whale shark, one of only a handful in captivity.

This is actually a creative commons image from the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta--the lighting was bad at the aquarium in Kenting.

Whale sharks are native to the waters around Taiwan, where they're called "tofu sharks." Apparently, whale shark meat looks a heck of a lot like tofu.

The aquarium also had an big glass tunnel--biggest I've seen, anyway--in their main tank.

"Forward, my fishy minions!"

They even had a tunnel through the beluga tank.

After the aquarium, we spent the rest of the day exploring the Kenting coast.

At one beach, we stumbled on a crew filming some kind of dramatic water rescue scene . . .

At another, we stopped to engage in two of Nana's favorite pastimes: mucking around in tide pools . . .

. . . and amusing precocious Asian children.

Then it was off to the Eulanbi Lighthouse at the very southern tip of mainland Taiwan.

(I say mainland Taiwan because the Taiwanese claim some rocks out there in the Luzon Strait to fatten up their territorial waters.)

The park surrounding Eulanbi Lighthouse is small, but criss-crossed with a network of surfaced nature paths through some really odd little landforms. Fun to explore.

That's "Kissing Rock," behind the bald spot.

With the overcast weather and the time of day (late afternoon), some of the trails looked pretty ominous.

After a while, the trail opened up onto a rocky beach--the actual, for real, southernmost tip of (mainland) Taiwan.

A really fun day overall. I especially liked driving the scooter. I keep threatening to buy one of my own . . .