Day 17: Taroko Gorge

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I woke up feeling kinda feverish… achy… damn team USA and their flu. Took the Tylenol Cold/Flu that I had but needed to get more. Went out to the family mart (none there) where they told me to walk down the street to find a pharmacy. There I got the nondrowsy cold meds for 120NT for a pack of 16 caplets. Super cheap!

Headed to Taroko (Tai4 Lu3 Ge2) Gorge – we arranged for Mr. Lai4 a taxi driver to pick us up at 9:30. Apparently, every couple years they do some military drills and close all the streets around Hualien (he wasn’t sure if it was all of Taiwan or just this area) so no one can drive and have police and military posted around to stop people. So, 9:30 to 10, we sat in the car.
Started feeling better as we drove towards the gorge. Guess the cold meds were taking effect. We stopped at the visitor center to grab some info. Then stopped at shakadang trail (next to big red bridge – walked down and along the trail for a little ways w/ good views of the clear waters of the river). It was hot out, but this whole trail was really shaded and nice. Then stopped but didn’t walk to the shrine where they commemorated those who died during the building of the road that passes through the park. Then went to swallow grotto trail (yan4 zhi1 ko3 maybe wrong pinyin). Then the Nine tunnels part we had to put on hardhats b/c they’d just opened it up today after some recent rockfalls. There were some really cool views of the gorge here, including some small waterfalls up top and places where it looked like the mountain was steaming. The gorge is huge, I wondered how long it took for the river to carve it out. We saw Frog Rock. We walked across a suspension bridge over the river that leads to a place you can only hike if you have a permit – I think at holiu (?). (previously we’d seen a suspension bridge that you could only cross if you had a permit). Then we had lunch in Tianshiang. And there’s a temple right there that we climbed the stairs to, which had a big white boddhisatva as well as a big gold one, and a pagoda at the top. Nice views and breeze from up around all those things. Then Baiyang trail, which is about at the center of the park. Our driver walked with us the 2.1km including through a huge tunnel at the beginning, through some other tunnels and along the mtn, to a big waterfall area. Totally beautiful. On our way back before heading through the first long tunnel, Amanda and I climbed down to the river (easy – there were def a bunch of Americans already doing this, and some Taiwanese but more Americans). Really cool clear water. The rocks there were big and easy to stand on. There was this dude jumping from rock to rock like a frog. There was a couple trying to walk up towards a more secluded area of the little pools being created amongst the rocks. In this whole park, there were so many things I felt like wouldn’t have been the same in parks in the states. Such as: low railings everywhere, and sometimes no railings, or places where you could easily climb to somewhere you weren’t supposed to be. Suspension bridges had really low side supports with wide openings – it would’ve been really easy to fall off/through esp for little kids. Playing in the river.

Got really sleepy on our way back. I’d been taking my cold meds every 3-4 hrs plus ibu, so I felt ok – not as achy as in the morning. But just tired. Took a solid power nap before he stopped us at this jade and rose stone store to take a look at this giant rock they have. Here the ladies at the counter really tried hard to sell us stuff and I felt bad for not getting something (they kept pushing the buy a gift for mommy tactic). But I didn’t feel bad enough to actually buy anything.

Got back around 5:30 or 6 I think. Showered, and that helped me feel somewhat better, but still wiped out. We contemplated whether to go eat or just fall asleep. When Amanda went downstairs to try to ask about any good close food places, she discovered that what she’d sort of suspected may have been our breakfast today when we left indeed was b/c they handed it to her. Sandwich still looked kinda good, so I took a couple bites (fried pork chop sandwich maybe?). Then we ended up going across the street to have noodles, then heading back for bed. I took a Nyquil and sat awake for awhile writing and watching tv, but not long. I was prob asleep by 10pm.