We stayed at the Liwu Hostel, which is literally right outside of the park. The location was perfect for visiting Taroko, but it was pretty much out in the middle of nowhere (a welcome change from chaos of Asian city life, but a little inconvenient). We ate pretty much every meal at 7-11 because that was the only place we could get food within walking distance, but it wasn't so bad. Taiwanese 7-11's are awesome. The hostel itself was definitely cheap (by cost and quality), but it's hard to give a fair review because it was our first ever hostel experience. We ended up spending more time there than expected since there is pretty much nothing to do after nightfall in a pretty wide radius of the park, but there wasn't anyone else in our room, and it ended up working out fine.
Our very first adventure in the park was the foolish decision to look at the trail map and pick the most difficult trail we could find...that happened to go straight up a mountain. We were unprepared to say the least, and a few days later, we still can hardly walk from the soreness in our legs. But we got a good four hour workout in, some pretty priceless pictures, and had plenty of time to relate our literal mountain climbing to our lives in a metaphorical way. So all in all, it was a successful misadventure.
Next, we worked some magic to figure out the park bus system (figuring out any kind of bus system in a Chinese-speaking country is always a blasty-blast). The bus took us to Swallow Grotto, which is a very popular and picturesque section of the Taroko Gorge.
We started Day 2 by taking the short walk out to the Shakadang Trailhead. This trail was definitely one of my favorite parts of the park. It goes right along the cliff through a particularly beautiful, turquoise blue section of river. And we even found a spot where we could walk right out into the river, so we could literally dip our toes in the waters of the Taroko Gorge.
Buluowan is another stop on the bus route that feels a lot more rustic and woodsy than some of the other parts of the park. There wasn't much to do there, but we did catch some great views.
We hopped back on the bus to head to the Tunnel of Nine Turns, another must-see, according to our research. It didn't seem to be much of a must-see anymore, however. Even though it was definitely a beautiful stretch of the gorge, it was extremely dangerous! There are "Beware of Falling Rocks" signs all over the gorge, but here, you could actually see the fallen rocks and damage they have caused. For fear of our safety, we didn't stay there very long!
The Eternal Shrine is dedicated to the nearly 500 people that died building the road through the park (and after spending some time on it, I can understand why). It was a nice little touristy stop to end our Taroko adventure.
Taroko National Park! Everyone should go!
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