3/6 Taroko Gorge

3/6/2013: I woke up at 7:30, Rihang made breakfast for me at 8am, and we were on the road by 9am. He loaded a mountain bike with front suspension onto the back of his van and we headed up Taroko Gorge.

Here is some info on Taroko Gorge:
map: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Taroko-Naional-Park-Map-Taiwan.png
park map: http://www.taroko.gov.tw/English/?mm=2&sm=2&page=3
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taroko_Gorge

Taroko Lodge

The gorge is extremely deep and very narrow, and the road is carved into the mountainside with many rock overhangs and tunnels along the way. The river is a chalky grey; snowmelt coming from the high mountains. The road is certainly narrow, with a few spots where it becomes one lane and a traffic light controls which direction gets to go. The tunnels are dark and narrow, and dripping from above. Before reading about Rihang's operation, I read on the Lonely Planet site that the typical way to see Taroko is on a tour bus. That didn't sound interesting to me, so I kept reading. It said you can also hire a car or taxi, but that didn't sound interesting either. You can also rent a scooter, which sounds exciting, but I've never driven a scooter before and the guide said that's not a good place to learn with aggressive Taiwanese drivers and windy roads. Lastly, it said that the "truly adventurous" can bicycle the gorge, but it also mentioned that those people typically are also missing some brain cells. I was a bit torn, and then the blog I read said that his bike ride was perfectly fine and was a lot of fun. I opted to follow the blog and ignore Lonely Planet, which I was starting to regret as we drove up the gorge. Rihang wasn't helping, as he was passing tour buses on the wrong side of the road around blind curves. He just said "safe safe, slow slow." He told me to get out of the bottom section before 3pm, otherwise "too many cars. Not dangerous, just too much noise." I was thinking he was downplaying the risks since bike tourism is his livelihood, but I was also excited for an adventure and a break from being the leisurely tourist.

He dropped me off 25km into the gorge at the trailhead for Wenshan, which had hot springs. The gameplan was for me to hike to the hot springs, stay there for about an hour, then bike a little down the road to Baiyan Waterfall Trail and hike to that (each hike is only 1-3km), then keep biking, spend some time on Lyushui Trail, keep biking, and then get back to the 7-11 in Xincheng at 4pm. We tested the bike (especially the brakes since my trip would be all downhill), Rihang set me up with a helmet, and he took off. I left the bike at trailhead and started hiking. I followed some stairs down (about 400 vertical feet) and easily found the hot spring pools along the side of the river. The hot water was piped from somewhere else and dumped into the pools, which drained into the river. There were four other people.

Hot springs pools in the bottom right

There was a strong sulphur smell, so it must have been legit. I got into the hot pool, which was very hot (my watch read 103 deg F). The other guys were occasionally getting into a side pool that was just river water, so I tried it. The water was snowmelt, so it was extremely cold, and I dunked myself and didn't last much longer. It was so cold that my breathing got quicker and shorter, so I got out and hopped back into the hot pool, which was much more tolerable than before the cold dip. I stayed for about 45 minutes and climbed back up to the bike.

I tentatively got onto the road and started pedaling downhill. I found the Baiyan Waterfall trailhead after about 5 minutes of riding, so I parked my bike and started hiking again. This trail had lots of Chinese tourists, who are less shy about trying out their English when they're in large groups, but it's less friendly and more like when someone "moo's" at a cow as they drive past. The falls were really impressive, probably dropping a few hundred feet and then leading into another waterfall that was probably 100 feet. The main river also dropped through some falls that were not as big but more impressive because of the amount of water passing through. A bridge passed over the roaring falls, and another suspension bridge offered a nice view of the Baiyan Falls.

Baiyan Falls

 I continued on through a few more tunnels and got to the "water-curtain cave." Apparently when the trail was being built, they were drilling through the mountain and opened up a seam in the rock that had become an underground water channel, so water is continuously pouring out of the ceiling of the tunnel. The park provides big yellow ponchos and flip flops for walking through the wet tunnel. It was pretty impressive, although I didn't have a flashlight so I don't think I got the full effect. I turned around and went back to my bike and continued down the road.

Water Curtain

The Lyushui Trail just went through some forest and had some nice scenic views of the river and the surrounding mountains. It was about 2km and didn't take very long.

For the rest of the trip, I just kept biking and stopping along the way to take photos. Unfortunately, my camera couldn't really handle the dark cliffs in the foreground and the bright sky in the background, so most of my photos turned out sort of washed out which is disappointing. The scale of everything was hard to capture with my camera - the immediate cliffs at the river rose up over a thousand feet, and then the distant peaks dwarfed the cliffs in the foreground. The sky was really blue, the mountains really green, the river rocks really white, and the river a cool grey. Too bad my camera skills couldn't really capture that.

The bike ride was safe for the most part. There was one extended tunnel where it was really dark and a car came up from behind and I wasn't sure if they'd see me. It wasn't really a close call, and the back of the car said "Relax. I drive." so I felt much better after that. There was another tight turn where a huge tour bus was going the other way and I had to stop and hug the wall because the side-view mirror was sticking out. I think it would have hit me had I gone 10 feet further down the road. Most cars were pretty courteous though, and I got a number of "thumbs ups" which apparently is only a white person phenomenon. Chinese and Korean tourists considered me on my bike to be worthy of a picture, but they were taking pictures of everything so standards were pretty low.

I got back to 7-11 a little before 4pm and bought some ice cream while I waited for Rihang to pick me up. We stopped at the train station and bought a ticket back to Taipei for that night, we raced back to his lodge so I could shower and change, and then caught the train back to Taipei.

The train ride was a long one, with a lot of extended stops along the way. I transferred trains twice once I got back to Taipei, then got on the wrong line and had to backtrack. I finally reached my hotel on the outskirts of the city around 10:40pm. It's a really swanky hotel, though, and I was upgraded for some reason, so I'm enjoying a clean, spacious, non-smelly room for a change. 

I had a small breakfast, a small lunch, and no dinner, so I went looking for food once I was settled in my room. The restaurant in the hotel was serving $30-40 meals, so I headed outside and walked south. I wasn't finding much - every time I saw neon signs on the next block, I thought it might be restaurants, but they were appliance stores and pet stores. I walked past an alley that had some street food vendors, so I headed their way. The first stall had all the lids closed on their food so I couldn't tell what they were serving. The next stall had everything imaginable uncooked on a stick. You just load up your basket with skewers and the guy cooks them for you. I decided I'd see what else was available. The next stall had a "noodle wok buffet" (my own term), where you fill a bowl with noodles, veggies, and meat, and they add the sauces and cook it for you. Kind of like mongolian bbq I guess. I went with that stall and went through the usual pantomiming with the older Taiwanese ladies to order and pay. They coaxed a shy younger girl over to talk to me in English, but by that point I had paid and they were cooking my food. The meal cost me $3.71 USD. It was really tasty, with some green peppers, onions, noodles, mushrooms, and a few other green vegetables I didn't recognize. It really reminded me of some dishes we had on our China trip in 2010. 

Long day but lots of fun!