Sandwiched by two days in Taipei we made the journey to Taiwan’s other major tourist site, the Taroko Gorge in Taroko National Park.  The park is (supposedly) one of the most spectacular natural environments in Asia and is pristine enough to be home to several groups of tribal groups who live in isolated villages.  It is possible to receive permits to visit these villages, but we didn’t have the time.  Getting there was extremely painless - a two hour train journey from Taipei to the city of Hualien cost about £9 return and from there the six of us managed to find a taxi driver who would happily drive us around all day for £13 per person.  The train journey itself was very pleasant - the carriages were clean, the seats were enormous and the line ran along the spectacular coast for much of the journey.

Frankly, there isn’t much to say about the area apart from that it is tremendously beautiful so I am going to be pretty lazy here and just fill the rest of this post with pictures.

A tributary of the Taroko River

Very blue water

The Eternal Spring Shrine

A monkey at the Tienhshiang Pagoda

A slightly precarious bridge

The main road through the valley