The first thing we see when we arrive in Xiaoliuqiu is not a turtle, but a sunset.
After a ferry crossing of around thirty minutes from Donggang, we arrive on this tiny island off Taiwan’s southwest coast. Xiaoliuqiu is famous above all for one thing: its sea turtles. They are exactly why we came.
But on this first evening, we are simply happy to see a beautiful sunset again. With our itinerary over the past few months, we have not actually had that many opportunities to watch the sun disappear directly into the sea. So finally finding an open horizon again and watching the sun sink into it simply feels amazing.
For dinner, we try one of the island’s large all-you-can-eat barbecue restaurants. For NT$450 per person, we enter a kind of large refrigerated room where you choose your own meat, kept on ice and constantly restocked. There are also fish, seafood, vegetables and side dishes, then you return to your table and grill everything yourself.
It is noisy, everything is sizzling, the tables are full and the atmosphere is really fun. For the price, we think the experience is fantastic, while our clothes come out smelling of barbecue, a scent that will stay with us until the next day.
On our second day, we quickly realise that having a scooter completely changes a stay in Xiaoliuqiu. The problem is that we had not booked one. So we start walking from rental shop to rental shop and very quickly realise that it is going to be more complicated than expected. At some places, all it takes is for two Westerners to walk in for arms to be crossed immediately in front of a parking lot that is nevertheless full of scooters: “No, no, no, no scooter.”
After almost two hours of walking, we finally find a rental owner willing to help us. The conversation happens mostly through Google Translate and a lot of gestures. Everything seems settled until we realise that he wants to rent us two scooters. We only want one for the two of us, but apparently his are not powerful enough to carry us together.
So we give up and set off again, a little desperate, in search of a fifth rental shop. That is when the man comes back and gestures for Matthieu to get on the back of his scooter. Matthieu, apparently always ready to follow a stranger who asks him to get on a scooter, agrees.
In reality, he simply takes him to another rental shop that has more powerful electric scooters and is willing to rent us one. After two hours of walking, we almost feel as though we have won the lottery. More importantly, once again we encounter the kindness that has struck us since arriving in Taiwan. This man could easily have let us leave once he realised his scooters were not suitable for us, but instead he took the time to drive us himself to someone who could help. Of course, not every encounter is the same, but this kind of spontaneous little gesture happened often enough during our trip to become a real part of that feeling of being especially welcome here.
Our first stop is Secret Beach, a well-known snorkeling spot. We already see a few turtles and spend about an hour in the water, but the beach itself does not win us over. So we get back on the scooter and head to Venice Beach, which is much quieter, where we simply spend the rest of the afternoon swimming and enjoying the island.
But it is the next morning, at Beauty Beach, that we truly understand why we came to Xiaoliuqiu. We were obviously hoping to see a few green sea turtles, and access to the beach is included in a NT$120 pass covering several of the island’s natural sites. A few steps down, the beach comes into view and, before we even reach the water, we can already see the first turtles just a few metres from shore.
Some swim peacefully near the beach while others come up to breathe before diving back towards the seagrass beds. We get into the water and very quickly realise that they are everywhere. All you have to do is turn your head to spot another one. Some are enormous, while others calmly feed just a few metres away from us, so focused that they barely seem to notice we are there.
Despite Beauty Beach’s small size, there are surprisingly few people. We have plenty of space and everyone there seems very respectful of the animals, keeping their distance and never trying to touch them. After other snorkeling experiences where everyone ends up almost on top of each other around the same animal, it completely changes the experience and allows us to spend long stretches of time simply watching them.
Then we swim a little farther offshore and, when we put our heads underwater, we discover a genuinely incredible scene a few metres below us, around a submerged rock. More than ten turtles are gathered in the same place. Some seem to be simply resting while others slowly rise towards the surface before heading back down. For several minutes, we float above them, watching them move through the water, and luckily, we film everything.
We had already been lucky enough to swim with turtles before, but never in conditions like these, never in such numbers and never so easily. One of them will stay especially vivid in our memories because it swims near us for a while, changes direction, comes back and then swims away again, almost as if it were playing with us. Of course, we keep our distance and let it decide where it wants to go, but for a few minutes, it genuinely feels as though we are sharing the moment with it.
We stay in the water for almost two hours and, when we finally get out, we already know that Beauty Beach has just become one of the highlights of our trip to Taiwan.
Three nights later, when we take the ferry back, there is no doubt about what we will remember from Xiaoliuqiu: the turtles feeding just a few metres from the beach, the one we felt as though we were playing with and, above all, the image of more than ten of them gathered below us, slowly rising towards the surface before diving back down.
The first thing we saw when we arrived in Xiaoliuqiu was a sunset. The last image we take away with us is of those turtles moving slowly beneath the water. Between the two, this tiny island more than lived up to its promise.