This was pretty much my ideal day trip! The scenic bus route winding through the mountains between Ruifang & Bitou is a tour in itself. We were blown away by the hospitality and the facilities at Ocean Love Dive Club. And the snorkeling was beautiful and easy to access. Plus we got to explore the super unique rock formations of Nanya beach. Here’s the details…
Getting there
We met up with friends at Zhongxiao Fuxing Bus stop (a few steps to your right as you exit the MRT station). We’d planned to take the 1061 to Ruifang which supposedly leaves every 15-20 minutes on the weekend, starting at 6:30am. But we waited from 6:40 to 7:00 and never saw it. So instead we hopped on the 1062 at 7:00am and were on our way.
The bus trip to Ruifang usually takes about 1hr 15min. But our bus took an unscheduled 15 minute stop to fill up on gas. :S This made our transfer at Ruifang very tight! But we did still manage to catch the 8:30 Fulong Golden Shuttle Bus #856. (We even had five minutes to spare, which was just enough to run across the street and buy vegetarian cold noodles from the guy who sells them on the corner!)
The 856 goes every half hour on the weekends, It’s a type of express bus that only stops at tourist hot spots. From Ruifang it takes you up into scenic Jiufen (sit on the driver’s side of the bus for some beautiful panoramic views of the coast), and then winds back down past the golden waterfall (on your right) until finally arriving at the coast. Just a couple more stops from there is Bitou.
We arrived at the Bitou stop at 9:05. From there we crossed the street and walked down towards the small cluster of shops. A minute later were were at Ocean Love Dive Club.
The dive shop
A coworker friend of mine told me about Ocean Love Dive Club. She’d gone to a beach clean up event they’d sponsored and was impressed with the owners passion for ocean-care. So we already were inclined to like this place! But our experience there blew us away.
Josh and I didn’t rent any equipment. But even still, they let us use a locker for free so we could leave our valuables there. And after going out, they also let us use their nice hot indoor showers supplied with shampoo and body-wash. They even washed our wetsuits out for us! Of course we did have 3 friends who were renting equipment from them, but even still this was incredibly gracious of them.
The equipment rental (including snorkel, mask, booties, fins and wetsuites) costs $550NT pp. This is a bit more expensive then then the shockingly low price of $300NT at the dive shop in LongDong. But here, the shop offered eye glass prescription specific masks. And the facilities were much more spacious and comfortable.
They have a large table inside where we sat and ate our cold noodle breakfast we’d brought from Ruifang. And when we came back at 1pm wet, tired and hungry – they offered to help us order a meal at the restaurant next door! This allowed us to put in a food order while our friend blow dried her hair and we repacked our gear. After eating, we walked next door and paid (so apparently we weren’t charged any extra for the service!).
We all agreed the experience with this dive shop was so great it makes it hard to want to go snorkeling anywhere else in the area!
The snorkeling spot
Of course none of that would have mattered if the snorkeling was terrible. But thankfully, that wasn’t the case! The snorkeling spot is just a 2 minute walk away from the shop. Take a right as you exit the shop and then when the road ends take the path on your right. Just around the bend is a great water rec area. At first I was a little taken aback by how many people were there. Lots of kids and family’s all out enjoying the water, along with fishermen out on some of the distant rocks. But although its certainly not a hidden place all to yourself, it didn’t feel crowded once we were snorkeling. Most of the kids were close to shore and there was plenty of wide open space to float and enjoy the water to ourselves.
The water was super clear that day. Even before getting in the water we could see little blue fish and box fish swimming around. And the water was very calm. A great spot for beginner snorkelers (as some of our friends were). We saw bright yellow butterfly fish, schools of lightning blue damselfish, box fish, needlefish, and lots of lovely coral. There were also a bunch of little jellyfish. But happily not the stinging kind (well unless maybe if you try to grab them, we didn’t go that far).
But the highlight was seeing a whole squad of squid! The first group I saw were pretty small and VERY fast moving. I desperately tried to chase them around but eventually grew tired. But then we spotted some larger ones hanging out near the buoys. It was fascinating to watch the way they move and we actually got to see them change colors right before our eyes. The dive shop had told us before going out that it was possible to see squid here on days with good clarity. So I’m hopeful we might see them again the next time we go!
A stop at Nanya Rock formations
Finally we returned to Ocean Love Dive club to shower up, return and repack things. And after our surprise but oh so welcome lunch, we headed back up to the bus stop to retrace our steps. I’d heard that just one stop back there were some interesting rock formations on the coast. And we agreed to give it a look before making the full return home.
Bus #719 or #886 are also supposed to be an option from Bitou to Nanya, but as it turned out the first one to come by was the Golden Fulong Shuttle Bus #856 that we’d taken before. So we grabbed that and 10 minutes later got off again to check out Nanya’s peculiar rocks. We told ourselves we’d just look around for a half hour but then promptly disregarded that plan and barely made it back for the bus an hour later.
Getting back to Taipei via a new route
Welll, actually… we missed the hour later #856 bus too. So instead, the next bus that came by was one headed for Keelung (pronounced Jee-Long, btw). So we took it! Fourty minutes later we were in Keelung. The bus kindly dropped us off directly in front of a pastry shop. So we all grabbed a few of those and then crossed the street to the Keelung bus station.
This station is very well set up! It has TONS of busses constantly headed out to Taipei and its just a question of which area you want to go. We found one that would take us to Zhongxiao Xingsheng MRT station and 15 minutes later the 1813 express bus was on its way. And the trip was quick! We forgot to time it, but it was definitely less than 40 minutes – regardless of what Googlemaps says. (Although be aware not all 1813s are express buses)
*Oh I almost forgot! One more perk of Ocean Love Dive club was the hot & cold filter water dispenser. We used it multiple times to fill up our water bottles for free! I believe the owner provides this service to encourage less plastic waste. They do sell cold drinks, but no bottled water and they only sell drink that come in recyclable cans and glass bottles.
*Want to pin this post? Here’s a picture for you!
