Taiwans south end: Bathing at the nuclear power plant

If you visit the beautiful island of Formosa, now the Republic of China or, in common words Taiwan, you need one week to drive around the complete island (read my former posts here). No, Taiwan is not really a big country. It takes only 1000 kilometers to circle the complete island. From the northernmost point, Fugui Cape, to the southernmost point only takes nine to ten hours of driving.

Than you reach the southernmost point: A place with an ugly concrete sign on a stony beach. On its left, it is the Pacific Ocean; the right, Bashi Channel. 300 miles away are the Philippines. 4000 miles south are Australia. At noon the sun is right before you.

The sea is blue, the wind blows warm and the sun is burning down here between the famous Eluanpi lighthouse and the ecological reserve area of Longkeng like a flamethrower. From the parking lot fortunetaly it is a short way through a small and shadowed jungle to the ocean side.

Narrow path to the south

There is a narrow forest trail and if you follow the trail for about ten minute you arrive at the final destination, Southernmost Point and you will see the spiral monument of Taiwans Southernmost Point (Longitude 120 degrees 50 minutes 0 seconds; Latitude 21 degrees 53 minutes 59 seconds) upon the reef.

They build a sea view platform on this place because the Taiwaneses are hefty photographers and when they – hundred of thousends do it every year – reach this famous place they need something in the back of their selfies.

There is not much more to see here. On the concrete platform there is atriangular pyramid-shaped mark with a compass, a wooden railing streches around but there is no way to go to the water. To do this you have to drive 15 kilometres to the Kenting Baishawan beach, a lovely, but a little bit strange place. There are sunbeds, umbreallas and kids are playing in the sand.

But only 500 meters away from the south bay beach you can see the Maanshan nuclear plant. The cooling towers are on a cliff over the strand like buildings from another world. The plant is 35 years old an still in charge, the atomic waste is stored here since the production starts.

Is the water warmer for this reason? I don't know it. And the most Taiwaneses doesn't know it too. They are not the greates swimmers of the world, bathing means here to put out your shoes and socks and walk the water at the edge. When we jumped into the waves of the Pacific Ocean they gathered around us and be giggling amazed.

But it is dangerous to go deeper into the blue than as the chest. The Pacific sometimes brings deadly waves, if you are standing in the water until to your knee you feel the power of the water that tries to reach for you and to suck you in. Only here and at the Nanwan Beach you should try it – on the wild and mostly stony beaches around it is life threatening.

Stading between two oceans, bathing in the shadows of a nuclear plant, walking on beaches where no one other is walking - Taiwan's southend may not be one of the more popular tourist locations, but it's definitely a place you wouldn't want to pass up.

Only one kilometre away at the Eluanbi Park you find the famous Eluanbi Lighthouse – Éluánbí, they tell us, is the pinyin name of the Mandarin pronunciation of its Chinese name that means "Goose Bell Nose", but not the real nose of a bell of a goose.

Devoured by the sea

Taiwaneses are a little bit laborious whit this kind of things: The „goose" and the "bell" are real, but the "nose" in the name is a term for the nearby Cape Maobitou, a part of the area's geologic formation known as the Eluanbi Beds. This means a Pleistocene stratum of yellow and brown sand, gravel, and clay, that is slowly being devoured by the sea.

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