Eastern coastline and Southern Taiwan

On Thursday we continued to drive south along the east coast of the island, which provided more great scenic pictures:

We passed through some small towns, but for the most part, easter Taiwan is pretty sparsely populated. More of the population on this side of the island are the native Taiwanese aborigines that are of the Malay descent. When the immigrants came from mainland China, the aborigines were driven from the western plains of the island up into the mountains. Although a minority in Taiwan, from what I observed and heard, the aborigines are increasingly having more equal political power and social services and becoming culturally more mixed with the Chinese Taiwanese.

We stayed the night in Taitung and on Friday continued down to the southern most point of Taiwan in the Kenting National Park. Views from the southern most tip, where the Erlanbi lighthouse is located:

It had been raining on and off for our entire trip, but the upside is that we managed to catch a pretty nice rainbow!

More pics at Flickr.