November 28, Taroko Gorge

The web (bless the Internet) page for Taiwan's Weather bureau has been showing steady improvement in the weather in the eastern side of the island, so we decided to re-institute the plan to go to Taroko Gorge. A few hours later, we were about halfway down the eastern coast of Taiwan, in a town called Hualien.

They had an excellent tourist info office (the second we'd found BTW), and one of the staff called our hotel and arranged for the shuttle to come pick us up. While we waited for the hotel shuttle, we did a mini tour of the town and discovered a liquor store with a single malt Scotch selection that was more extensive than any I'd seen in California. I settled on a 12 yr Spey (NT $650, US $19).

The ride to our hotel took us north along the coast for a bit, then took a narrow well-paved road into the gorge. Beautiful. Cataracts and falls were everywhere from the fresh rain. The main river is an opaque gray color. At one point, pure blue water fed in from a tributary, creating a clean line of bi-colored water.

Our room overlooks a rushing river. I'm listening to the sound of the water while I type this blog. If you look carefully, you can see a small waterfall.

Just a few hundred meters down-river, a temple has its own suspension bridge.

Take care everyone. Feedback from you makes this more fun, so don't forget to leave comments!