Today, Joey and me woke up early to go to Taroko Gorge. Shee did not want to join us as she was too lazy to travel out of Taipei. We took the 0850 train from Taipei main station to Xincheng, the city nearest to the gorge. The train goes all the way to Hualien, where you can also go to the gorge as well, just that it takes a longer time. I am very impressed with the Taiwan railway system as the trains are new, comfortable and efficient. We took the tze chiang express train which bypassed a number of stops along the line. Throughout the journey, we passed through villages which is a paradigm shift from the modern city of Taipei. The scenic route cut through montain ranges and rolled along the coast of the Pacific ocean. I love train travel as it allows me to see the country in a different perspective and there are so many sights and sounds to absorb.
When we reached Xincheng Taroko station, many Japanese tourists alighted along with us and they made their way to the tour buses waiting outside the station. The public buses that ply Taroko National Park are few and infrequent, so I thought it would be a good idea to rent bicycles and cycle up the gorge. However, there was no bicycle rental kiosk in sight except for a scooter rental. The middle-aged lady manning the store welcomed us warmly and asked if we wanted to rent her scooters. I told her that I don’t have any scooter riding experience and I only have a car driving license, but she persuaded me to rent her scooter as it was very easy and convenient to drive it. Since the gorge was quite far away to go on foot, we rented the scooter from her. It was really easy to drive it and only NT400 for 8 hours.

We went up to Taroko National gorge with the wind in our hair. taroko park hq – eternal spring shine – tunnel of nine turns (the best gorge trail in Taroko) – cimu bridge (motherly devotion bridge) – helui campground – tiansiang. This was the route we took, making numerous stops along the way to take magnificent stunningly beautiful photographs, to hide from the rain and for lunch. It was very relaxed as we were doing free and easy. My favourite part was the tunnel of nine turns where we drove through the tunnel, some parts were pitch black as there were no windows or crevices to allow light to pass through. Sometimes cars trucks would overtake us as we were driving at a slow speed of 40kmph. There was one occasion when a car drove on the wrong side of the lane and I had to honk at him before he realised his mistake.

In the late afternoon, we decided to return to the train station. It took around half an hour to drive back the whole trail without stopping. The rain had stopped and the sun had come out, so it was warm. We went to the taroko park hq which we missed out in the first place. There we learnt more about the ecosystem of the national park, the number of deaths of hikers in the park and the other national parks around the world.

After returning the scooter, we took the 1653 train from xincheng back to taipei. This tze chiang express train came from hualien and its final destination is kaohsiung. The whole journey must be damn long because it goes up north to kaohsiung then goes back down south the the second largest city in taiwan, kaohsiung. In our carriage, there was a bevy of girls all wearing “roots canada” tshirts of different designs and they had luggage stored on the racks above the seats. They had bought many big bags of pastries which I think are the local specialty of hualien. The return trip took around 2h 20min and we arrived in taipei just in time for dinner. We had a simple dinner of beef noodles and fried oysters in the food street behind our hotel. We were too tired to go anywhere else after that.
good night!~