The Taroko Gorge

The Taroko Gorge is absolutely stunning and if you do visit Taiwan you must make this part of your trip, like the Sun Moon Lake these two places are my favourites in Taiwan so far. The half hour bus journey from Taroko to Tiansiang gives you a taste of whats to come, the highway meanders through the gorge through many tunnels some a 1000m long over bridges and through some pretty dodgy areas where rockslides are common, i can imagine in bad weather this road would be shut pretty quickly. You can see debris from falling rocks on the roadside, there are 7 or 8  points along the way where the Tour buses stop and everybody is out taking photos. We spent over an hour in Tiansiang taking pics from various vantage points, theres not much there apart from a 5 star hotel a post office and a restaurant where we had an excellent lunch before we walked back along the roadside through the gorge, the plan was to walk for a couple of hours then take the bus the rest of the way, theres only 4 buses all day up and down the gorge and as we found they were doing some work in several places closing down the road for 50 mins in every hour in the afternoon. We must have walked 7 or 8km before getting the bus stopping many times to take photos, i crossed the rope bridge which i didnt feel too comfortable about, it seemed to wobble about a bit and the railings were not very high, i turned around to see Selina shaking the ropes laughing. We got back to the hotel and checked in and rested our weary feet, we decided to have a little bike ride into the gorge the following morning before leaving, the hotel had a few bikes outside which you can borrow.