For another day trip, we travelled to Taroko National Park which is on the East coast of Taiwan. It is a stunning park with winding roads and tunnels up the Taroko gorge. We got a taste of Chinese New Year holiday traffic as it only took us 3 hours to drive to the park, but about 7 hours to drive back! It made for a long day, especially for our dedicated drivers, but we were so glad we got to see this side of Taiwan as well.
The park entrance was nice with lots of information, but it didn’t take long from there to enter the gorge where the road often had to go through tunnels and half tunnels to make its way into the park.
There were some beautiful looking temples and pagodas in various nooks and crannies. However with only one day there, and having seen some temples in the cities already, we opted to enjoyed them in passing as we headed to some hiking trails.
Yuewang Pavilion
The start of this trail was a small pavilion and suspension bridge. We were hoping to hike a bit of the trail past the bridge but it was closed, or was only open to special permit holders, so we mostly just enjoyed the bridge.
Our first close-up view of the beautiful water and patterned rocks did not disappoint.
Racing across a bouncing bridge from two perspective:
Tunnel of Nine Turns Trail
This trail was actually the tunnel system of the original road up this part of the gorge before a new tunnel was done to allow modern vehicles. However, there was no parking there so we parked the car about 2 kms away and all pilled into the van much to the kids amusement. This is how family memories are born!
The viewpoint…
…and the view. Stunning blue water and beautiful patterns in the rocks.
Buluowan Suspension Bridge
Our next stop was the newest suspension bridge built way up high over the gorge. There was a windy road to get up the top of the hill, but a large parking lot and new guest center so is was made to handle the crowds. Lots of tour buses and people visiting and it was all wheelchair accessible, even the bridge. After coming from Latin America, where that was not the case, it was nice to see people visiting in wheelchairs.
Shakadang Trail
Our last stop of the day, was our longest trail and just as nice as the other stops.
We had to cross a pretty cool bridge from the parking area to the start of the trail.
From the bridge you got a good view of the trail carved into the side of the gorge wall.
At times the clearance got pretty low and I had to walk with my head tilted. The kids told me that locals were saying “he is too tall” in Mandarin as I walked by.
Not sure what plants these were though they looked kind of like poinsettias which are native to Central America, not Taiwan.
As we walked it was easy to focus on the beautiful water, rocks and foliage around us that it was easy to forget to look up. When I did remember, I was struck at how deep the gorge was. It is hard to capture the size in pictures.
The kids were wanting to take a picture of themselves on the big rock across the river but couldn’t figure out a safe way across in the short amount of time we gave them. With disappointed faces and saying that they couldn’t get a picture on top of the rock, I told them to jump and bend up their knees and I’d get a picture of them “on” the rock. I almost got the perfect perspective shot with one take before they fully understood what I was asking 
Up this valley lives some aboriginal Taiwanese and when we got a few kilometers in, we came to some food stalls. Even on hiking trails we get to try new foods! We got some ma gao sausage, which had a special kind of “mountain pepper” seed in it for flavouring which tasted like a lemon grass black pepper and was really good. It is only grown in that location and is common in their local cooking. The vendor also gave us samples of agar lemon aiyu tea, which was cold and had some jelly in it, but had a great flavour.