Our day trip to Taroko Gorge warrants a blog and video all of its own.
Before I launch into a complete ‘photobomb session’, Taroko Gorge absolutely has to be on your ‘must visit’ list if you ever come to Taiwan.
Where is Taroko Gorge?
Travelling in a South/East direction, Hualien (the nearest city to Taroko Gorge) is 118km from Taipei and takes approximately 2 hrs 40 minutes by THSR (Taiwan Semi-High-Speed Rail). The train journey cost us $1244TWD/$59.40NZ return for two of us.
Our Semi High-Speed Train and a small section of line with double tunnels
What Makes it So Special?
I find how the Taroko Gorge was created quite fascinating. Around 4 million years ago, the Philippine Oceanic Plate and Eurasian Continental Plate collided. This, in turn, caused the rising of thick layers of limestone rock from the ocean floor to heights of over 3,000 metres in the air. Now, this is where it gets even more amazing. Combined with high pressures from the reactions, this caused the original limestone rock to turn into marble. Who knew this could happen! Because of this, there are majestic sheer marble cliffs. Marble veins of all different colours can be seen running throughout the length of the longest cliffs.
In about 60km the landscape rises from sea level to some of the tallest peaks in Taiwan at over 3,400 metres. Now that is what I call steep.
The veins of the coloured marble in the cliff face
Most Dangerous Road
Taroko Gorge is the world’s deepest gorge and also boasts the most dangerous road. There is no other road like it. Its construction claimed 450 lives.
I would call it an engineering masterpiece. It slices its way through the mountains. Full of blind curves, sharp turns and narrow paths that lead through cliffs and mountains.
It tests the skill and courage of any driver (or passenger for that matter). You cannot suffer from vertigo or fear of landslides. The road is full of buses, pedestrians, scooters and cars who all fight for space on the narrow road.
Adding to the mix is extremely heavy rain in typhoon season as well as regular seismic activity. No wonder we were all issued with hard hats while walking a stretch of the road and tunnels. I’m not sure how helpful they would have been in the event of an earthquake!
The area is prone to an average of three or four tropical cyclones a year with up to 1200mm of rainfall. Heavy rain results in landslides so it is always a good idea to check the forecast ahead of a visit.
Options
There are a few things to consider when wanting to visit Taroko Gorge.
You can stay for a night or two at either Hualien or Taroko village or you can do it as a day trip from Taipei which is what we did.
Self Guided
To get from Hualien to the gorge is about 1.40 hr bus trip (48km). There is a bus service that you can catch to get there. It will take you to the Park Headquarters and various other attractions through the gorge. Keep in mind that when you get off at any of these stops, you will need to wait for the next bus to get to the next stop. If you need more information regarding this option, click here for the timetable and costs.
This option wouldn’t be so bad if you were staying in the area but we didn’t want to waste our day waiting around for the next public bus to pick us up. We wanted to make sure to get the most out of our day. I was still not feeling 100% so standing on the side the road waiting for goodness knows how long for the next bus was the last thing I felt like doing.
Private Tour
After scouring the websites and reviews, we decided to book with a company called MeetMyGuide. They have a variety of tour options to choose from but we settled on the Taroko Park Classic Tour. What appealed to us with this particular company is that they specialise in small group tours and they guarantee that there are no shopping stops along the way (which we hate when on a tour).
They booked the train tickets for us so all we needed to do was go to our local 7/11 store and use a special ‘train ticket’ machine and print the tickets out. We then paid the cost direct to the 7/11 which included a small handling fee. This was such an easier way to do it, especially with the help of a very friendly shop assistant.
We were booked on the 7.05 am morning train and the 5.30 pm afternoon train to come home.
The cost of our tour was $5050TWD/$241NZ for two.
Qingshui Cliff was our first stop before the gorge. Just like a painting!
Our Tour Guide Alan
We were picked up by our guide Alan at the Hualien Station on arrival. We were very fortunate that we were the only ones on the tour. We were in a very comfortable 7 seater car with our own personal driver/guide. Alan was a really personable guy. He had a great sense of humour and we shared a lot of laughs along the way. He squeezed as much as he could into the day and ensured we covered off everything we wanted to see, plus more. How lucky were we? He spoke excellent English which was all self-taught. He tells us it’s from watching YouTube and Netflix movies. That is probably why we could pick up a slight American twang when he spoke.
Walking the Swallow Grotto took us into the heart of the gorge
We were blown away by the beauty of this part of Taiwan. It is so different to anything else we’ve seen during our travels through Taiwan.
Click on the link for MeetMyGuide to view our itinerary and other options.