Taiwan’s Turtle Island: surfing, diving, incredible views – and fantastic beaches within easy reach
- Taiwan’s Turtle Island attracts everyone from watersports fans to military buffs and volcano enthusiasts, and offers a majestic perspective from its 398m peak
- Toucheng on the mainland, which provides boat links, has become something of a boomtown and is also the gateway to some of Taiwan’s best beaches
Off Taiwan’s northeastern coast, the double hump of Guishan Island, also known as Turtle Island, dominates the view from all points along a 60km-long (37 mile) arcing sweep of coastline of the Lanyang Plain. No matter where one is on this gentle parabola of shoreline, you cannot help but gaze upon this solitary and strangely shaped volcano.
In profile, the island resembles a sea turtle, its massive triangular headland facing the Pacific Ocean and its thin tail – a natural, 1km-long jetty of round loose stones – pointed back towards mainland Taiwan.
Fishermen and the now uninhabited island’s former residents speak of “the Turtle” as if it were alive and view it as a guardian of the bay.
Its tail sways with the seasons, they say, wagging to the north with the summer’s southern swells, and then back when the currents reverse in winter. And from its head, sulphurous steam jets out of volcanic vents in spots where one might expect to find nostrils.
I’m heading for Turtle Island on the foredeck of a 29-foot ocean cruiser, skipping over small swells. There is an exhilaration to any ocean voyage in fair weather, and all six of us on board are smiling.
Tourists have been taking pleasure cruises to Turtle Island, which lies 10km off Toucheng, since at the latest the 1930s, but a lengthy hiatus came with World War II and then a nearly 40-year moratorium on coastal tourism under Chiang Kai-shek’s martial law.
