On Monday, Mel and I went to Taroko Gorge, which is a 19KM marble canyon located about 20 minutes from the city of Hualien on the east coast of Taiwan. The bright blue waters of the Liwu river run at the base of cliffs that are as high as 3800 meters in places. This was a day where everything around us was B I G and before long my neck felt stiff from looking up so much.
We woke up in our hotel at 7:20am and 10 minutes later we had a complimentary breakfast delivered to our room. After eating we went down to the hotel's "5-star" lobby to wait for our tour bus. We were the first ones on the bus so we were able to nab the front seat, which would later give us great views through the front window. However, the roads around Taroko Gorge are narrow (at times the lanes become wide enough for one car only) and the bus often seemed to drive within inches of the side of the mile-high cliffs- which made our great view through the front window a little freaky. There were moments when I was sure that we would be getting a very unique view of the gorge by flying off the cliff! There were palpitations at times...
The bus first stopped at the park headquarters for around 20 minutes, which gave us time to grab a coffee and have a quick photo shoot. The tour was entirely in Chinese so we had no idea where we were, how long we were stopping for or when to be back at the bus, but luckily after this stop a fellow tourist who spoke English began translating for us.
The bus headed uphill and let us off for another photo shoot. Check out how blue that water is.
Next we stopped at a recreation area to take more pictures and enjoy the view. On the drive to our next destination we also saw some snow! The elevation was high enough that at the very peak of some of the mountains you actually can see snow in Taiwan. You'd have to climb pretty high to build a snowman, y'all.
The last stop before lunch was at the base of a gravel trail where we hiked for about half an hour. The guy who was translating for us wasn't sure why the bus would have us hike here because, in his opinion, it "wasn't beautiful". For a while, he was right- it was just a hike through the woods with no views of anything! Interestingly, he told us that around a hundred years ago this was a trail that headhunters used to travel around. Headhunters? A hundred years ago?? That seems a little recent.
About halfway through the hike we got a little wet walking behind a small waterfall before we reached a pitch-dark cave. The cave was a little twisty so for a period of about 30 seconds we couldn't see a thing until we made a turn and some natural light started to shine in. It was pretty cool!
On the other side of the cave we crossed a small suspension bridge and walked along a steep cliff and enjoyed awesome views of the bright blue river and massive white marble rocks far below.
For lunch we were sat 10 to a table and huge plates of food were brought out for everyone to enjoy, buffet style. My idea of a good buffet features far less fish heads and shrimp with beans than what we were provided with. If you enjoyed seafood, this was probably a good meal but I just kind of picked at the bony chicken and tough beef while eating bowls and bowls of rice. Mmmm... white rice.
After lunch we drove to the Tunnel of Nine Turns, where we walked through nine man-made tunnels on the road along the edge of the gorge for about 30 minutes. This was a really scenic area, and right around the time that we arrived here I realized that my camera battery was basically dead. Sucks!! Also, at the start of the trail there is a sign that says "Caution: Falling Rocks", and check out the rocks in the picture above that have fallen!
Luckily, we were provided with snazzy hard hats- though I'm not sure how effective they'd be if one of those boulders decided to fall on us.
The last stop on our tour was the Eternal Spring Shrine, which was built to honor all the people who died making this area. The shrine, nestled on the side of a lush green cliff, looks really colorful and is one of the major landmarks of Taroko Park. The waterfalls, with all their branches, looked especially impressive.
At the shrine. Camera dyyyyyinggggggggg.
After we left the shrine a woman dressed like a gypsy hopped on our tour bus and tried to sell everyone some fish and pork jerky with mushroom powder. It looked like she made a killing, but not from us. We were then driven to a beach, where we hung around for 45 minutes or so. I'm not sure why we were brought to the beach because I don't think it's part of the park, but it was possibly because the tour had ended close to an hour early. The beach was really nice, though, and the air was warm.
We got dropped off at the train station with close to 3 hours before our train was due to leave. When I orginally booked our tickets I didn't know what time the tour would finish, so I chose a later time to be safe. Since we knew that there wasn't really much to see or do in Hualien we had our tickets changed to 4:30, so we were able to leave within 10 minutes of getting there and we got home with lots of time for Mel to work on her lesson planning for the next day. Me? I still had one more day off! It's a rough life.
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