Planes, Trains, and Private Taxis

Organizing a trip to a gorge in a remote area in Taiwan is not the easiest task to do from another country and when you don't speak Mandarin. With a large group of 13 and lack of other options, we all decided to pay 600NTD each (about 20USD) and rent a private taxis for the day to take us around Taroko gorge. Granted the twenty dollar price tag wasn't bad at all considering we were chauffeured everywhere and had the taxis for a full eight hours.

We drove 45 minutes from our hostel to the gorge and then got to explore most of what the national park had to offer. There was some hiking involved, ringing of bells in shrines hard hat wearing, and crossing of suspended bridges across the gorge. All in all the day was amazing and the gorge was one of the prettiest landscapes I've ever seen.

The entire gorge is made marble based and beautiful clear water runs through most of it. There are also quite a few temples and other shrines throughout.

Driving Tunnels Through the Mountain

Suspended Bridges

White Buddahs

 

Long hikes through the gorge wore us all out and most of us slept the entire way back to the hostel. We also made a quick pit stop at the beach before heading back. The weather didn't make for much of a beach day, but it was still nice to get some fresh air. It was also interesting to see the black rocky sand and HUGE waves of the Pacific. Our English speaking cab driver also agreed to take us to the train station and help us buy tickets to Pingxi for the next day. 

Gorge Selfie

Cold Day at the Beach

After another round of napping we woke up for dinner and went to another night market in Hualien. All of the night markets in Taiwan offer similar food so it was another Taiwan Taco for me! We also splurged and paid $3USD for a 15 minute back massage at one of the stalls in the market. They were definitely not gentle and I still have bruises on my arms. The masseuse did manage to get out a lot of my knots though! 

Taiwan Taco