The Magong Pengnan Line — Part 3 of a three-part series on Penghu's car-free sightseeing buses — follows the southern coastline from a sea cave that thunders with every wave, across what many visitors call the island's most beautiful beach, to a pair of centuries-old stone pagodas standing guard above the harbour.
Most visitors to Penghu point their scooters at the Cross-Sea Bridge and the basalt formations and leave it there. The south shore asks for something different — a willingness to sit with the percussion of the Taiwan Strait crashing into rock, to walk barefoot on coral sand that glows white in full sun, and to end the morning at a pair of stone towers that have been telling fishermen they are nearly home for generations. The Magong Pengnan Line links all of this without a rental vehicle or a map. The cruise-style Taiwan Tourist Shuttle bus departs from Magong Harbor at 08:28 with a guide on board, handles every transfer, and is back in the city by 12:20.
Fongguei Cave: the strait as a natural bellows
At the tip of the Fongguei Peninsula, the coastline takes the full force of the Taiwan Strait head-on. Centuries of wave action have carved a network of sea caves and channels deep into the basalt bedrock. When a wave surges into the narrower passages and forces compressed air and water upward through a surface crack, the cave produces a deep booming exhalation. As the wave retreats, air is pulled back down through the same crack with an inhaling sound. The two-way cycle gives the site its name — Fongguei Cave, meaning "bellows," the traditional implement used to stoke cooking fires.
Standing on the viewing tower above the cave, the visual contrast is immediate and stark: black basalt in the foreground, deep blue water at the horizon, and the silhouettes of Tongpan and Hujing islands on clear days. When the swell is running, white spray shoots straight up against the rock face in a scene that draws as many cameras as the tidal path does on the east coast. By late afternoon, the same rough coast changes register entirely — golden light fills the surface of the strait, and the basalt takes on a warmth it does not have at midday.
Arrive early. The cave's sound carries well before you reach it, and the crowds tend to build toward noon.
Marine Life Propagation Station, Penghu County
The next stop is the Penghu County Marine Life Propagation Station, Taiwan's longest-running algae cultivation facility. The station has been carrying out marine restoration and aquaculture research in Penghu for decades; its public-facing areas bring visitors into direct contact with that work through aquaculture tanks, audiovisual displays and touch sections that explain how the surrounding reef ecology is managed and replenished. It is a quieter stop than the cave, and a more informative one — the kind of place that adds a layer of context to everything else on the southern coastline.
Sanshui Beach
Sanshui Beach is the south shore's full change of mood. The beach is built from fine coral sand that catches the sunlight and throws it back as a concentrated white brightness; the water in front of it shifts from pale turquoise at the edge to a deep clear blue further out. The combination has given Sanshui a reputation as Penghu's finest beach, and it is not hard to see why — the scene reads as more Southeast Asian resort than the raw volcanic coastline left behind at Fongguei Cave an hour earlier.
The beach rewards slow movement. Walking barefoot, the sand is cool even in summer. Sitting on the shore, the sound is mostly waves and wind. In the warmer months, paddleboarders and windsurfers share the bay with swimmers; the sheltered shape of the cove keeps the conditions manageable even when the strait is rough outside. There is no pressure to do anything in particular. That is, in its own way, the point.
Shougang Zhongwu Pagodas
The final stop is the Shougang Zhongwu Pagodas, a pair of stone towers at Suogang whose name encodes their orientation — 子 (north) and 午 (south) in the traditional Chinese compass — marking them as aligned on the meridian axis. Built and expanded across multiple generations, they stand as some of the largest traditional feng-shui stone towers in Taiwan.
The local belief is that the towers stabilise the winds and protect the community from the forces that blow in off the strait. For fishermen, the practical reading was simpler: two tall towers on the southern shore meant the harbour was close. The twin structures are quieter than the cave and less photogenic than the beach, but they carry a different kind of weight — the accumulated belief of a community that has spent centuries negotiating with the sea, leaving its markers in stone. （Related： Penghu by Bus: The Route Where the Sea Divides — and History Waits Underground ｜ Latest ）
Plan Your Trip:
Route: Magong Pengnan Line | Taiwan Tourist Shuttle
Departure: Magong Harbor Station (馬公港站) — 08:28
Return: Magong Harbor Station — 12:20
Operating days: Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday (closed Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday)
Tickets:
- One-day pass: NT$200 full / NT$100 half
- Two-day combo (Pengnan + North Ring): NT$450 full / NT$225 half
- Two-day combo (Pengnan + Huxi): NT$400 full / NT$200 half
- Three-day pass (all three routes): NT$600 full / NT$300 half
- Half-price: seniors 65+, persons with disabilities plus one companion, Penghu residents, children
- Two-day and three-day tickets cannot be purchased onboard
