Hualien Photos - Taroko Gorge

Taroko Gorge. This has to be one of the most impressive natural sites I've ever seen, next to Yellow Mountain [黃山] in mainland China. I'll let the pictures hopefully speak for themselves.


Hanging bridge over Swallow Grotto [燕子口], one of the famous tourist sights


The river at the entrance of the park


Golden bodhisattva statue at the temple near Tianxiang [天祥], a small town about one-third of the way into the gorge


Bridge to the temple in Tianxiang, looking up at the mountains


Debris from recent rockslide, requiring the road to be detoured. These occur very frequently in Taroko Gorge due to the incredibly steeply-angled mountainsides


Rockslide. Not quite so recent (as can be seen by the small vegetation growth)


Mountaintops. Because we rode mopeds we were able to get further than most tour buses, which cannot continue past Tianxiang

Hualien Photos - Hualien City

So as I mentioned last time, I spent Wednesday through Friday in Hualien [花蓮], an eastern Taiwanese city known for its beautiful beaches and mountains. It's also the most common gateway to Taroko Gorge, which is a deep gorge carved into the mountains by the Liwu [立霧] River. It is famous for its sheer sides and the abundant marble found in the gorge.

Hualien is fairly large area so it's difficult to get around without some form of transportation, be it taxi, bus, car, or moped. So the other two Americans and I decided to rent mopeds for Wednesday and Thursday, and we used those to drive around Hualien and Taroko Gorge. Dangerous? Perhaps. But it was a lot of fun and mopeds can get to places in the gorge that tour buses cannot reach. Definitely worth it!

Here are photos of Hualien itself, and I will post photos of Taroko Gorge in a separate entry.


The scooter I rented to ride around Hualien and Taroko Gorge


An ancestral hall in Hualien city. Looked impressive but there wasn't much inside


Mountains behind an airbase (hence the barbed wire fence in the foreground)


Pacific Ocean

Pre-Hualien

Instead of going to Sun Moon Lake with the study abroad group (as I had plans last weekend which involved seeing off my Japanese classmate, baking cheesecake, and lots of time with a guy), I am instead travelling to Hualien (花蓮) on the eastern coast of Taiwan. It's supposed to be a beautiful region. I will leave tomorrow on the train at 9:55 am, and should return to Taipei on Friday at 10:35 pm. I will make sure to take lots of pictures!