Taiwan’s southern tip - get away from it all, relax and enjoy gentle bike rides, birdwatching, and much more

On a fine day, the Eluanbi Lighthouse and its surroundings are incredibly peaceful. A few tourists stroll among the low, white buildings and the round tower with its high balcony, in a gently rolling landscape of grass and woods on a headland in Kenting National Park, at the southernmost tip of Taiwan. Yet the tranquillity belies a violent past.

The lighthouse was built to stop shipwrecks caused by submerged reefs. Among the most infamous of disasters to occur here was the grounding of American merchant ship Rover, on March 13, 1867. The captain, his wife and 12 crew initially survived the accident, but when they came ashore, they were set upon and murdered by local aboriginals. Just one Chinese sailor escaped to tell the tale.

The aborigines didn’t take kindly to outsiders and, when the lighthouse was built, in the 1880s, it included fortifications. A sign notes Eluanbi was “a unique armed lighthouse in the world”, and its walls still have holes through which weapons would have been fired. A moat provided extra protection.

The shore is a platform of coral reef that’s been raised above the high-tide line – its surface so rough it makes walking across it difficult – and beyond are shallow waters in which new coral grows. The coast roads, villages, coves and beaches in this part of Kenting are best explored by bicycle. Inland and uphill, the Kenting National Forest Recreation Area, Taiwan’s only tropical botanical garden, is better explored by foot.

I expect tropical lushness, but the forest is relatively sparse; even its so-called “giant” trees would be dwarfed by a typical Hong Kong banyan. Lizards 30cm long, with yellow flashes on their sides, linger by the paths, a family of Formosan macaques feeds in a fig tree bearing round yellow fruit.

A footpath with overhead lighting runs through the 137-metre Fairy Cave, one of several in the recreation area. More a church than the “cathedral” that grand caves are sometimes described as, this boasts several small, rounded stalactites and a coating that gives the walls the texture of the inside of an oyster shell.