Week 3 involved 2 more teaching shifts that went well, came prepared with 2 crosswords for each class that kept them interested enough along with various games I devised to keep them quiet. The first lesson was on the continents and second on the solar system…. kids seemed to enjoy the classes and was easy money for myself.
Later in the week went to a house warming party where I met some other ex-pats who were teaching over here and got some good tips on travel in the rest of south east Asia. Also spent an afternoon on the Maokong Gondola in the hills to the south east of the city. A cool trip high over the hills with a glass bottomed carriage. Stopped off at the awesome mountain temple of Zhian that overlooked the city. Saw some amazing stonework carvings and temple ornamentation there. ( see photo).
The highlight of the week though, and one of the highlights of the whole trip, was a two day excursion to the Taroko Gorge a 3 hour train ride to the south. Headed off with Balloon city Rob and a borrowed tent. Only working in the afternoons had meant my daytimes had been flipped upside down and I was typically staying up until 3am and getting up between midday and two in the afternoon. Due to a extra long lie-in and a timing mix up, we almost missed out 5pm train from Taipei and had to run to the platform.
Have done a lot of travelling with Rob in the past and punctuality has never been our strong point……..
Once onboard the train all was well, for the 3 hour trip the price was around 15pounds, the leg room on the train was amazing and they served really good hot meals airplane style. We arrived at our stop at the town of Walien just after 8pm and negotiated a cheap hotel room near the station. Went out for a dinner and a few beers, unfortunately this was not as cheap as the accommodation, with the cheapest pint being around a fiver…nether the less enjoyed my pint and half of Hoegarden served in an extra large glass. With the seaside town being virtually dead in the winter off season had an early night and got up early the next morn to get up into the Taroko area.( see various photos)
The original plan had been to rent scooters for two days, but with the cheapest price in town being about a tenner a day, decided to just get the local bus. Managed to just catch the next service going from the station after a fortunate enquiry at the tourist information post we almost walked by.
After about an hour of driving through the Walien area we entered the national park gates and the road curved up sharply into the hills along a river gorge the likes of I had never seen before. The depth of the gorge was truly impressive with mountain tunnels running along the road and waterfalls falling into the river below. Rockfalls and landslides were common especially around the time of year we were there. The aftermath of previous rockfalls was clear to see along the road…..
After some confusion with the driver as to where we wanted to get off and an extra ticket purchase we left the bus at our campsite about halfway up the gorge along a beautiful meander in the river. The campsite was free with free facilities ( awesome). And sat on a shallow terraced ridge between the river cliffs and the road and mountain sides behind. The pitches were on wooden platforms that kept the tent floors dry. A good idea but pretty hard to sleep on. Luckily I had my trusted air mattress……Rob wasn’t so lucky and was in for an uncomfortable night’s sleep….
By the time we were set up it was around 1.30pm, we instantly set off on one of the longer hikes in the area. A 5km hill hike to a natural hot springs on the other side of the mountain. The trails were fantastic, although tiring. The first section was a steep set of wooden plank stairs that were hard work on the legs. Often the trail was so steep that you had to use a rope of chain to drag yourself up, with a hundred foot drop just a few feet away. The surrounding forests were lush though and every now and then an amazing valley view would appear out of the fog.( see photos) The second section was along a long ridge before we started to head down again. There were more ropes and chains to use on the way and we often had to repel ourselves down sections backwards. The recent rain had made the trail slippery and tricky, often the stairs would be made up of slippery slate type rocks, we both came close to stacking it completely on several occasions. A pretty dangerous and demanding trail, in fact the hot spring we were heading towards had recently been closed due to a rock fall killing 3 hikers while they soaked at bottom of the gorge.
After about 2.5t hours we reached a rope suspension bridge that crossed the gorge below us. To access it we had to use a vine that hung over a 15foot concrete wall…..the signs along the trail were pretty sketchy and there seemed to be no alternate route down.. so we climbed down cautiously. Safely on the side of the suspension bridge we were met by a group of 3 older Taiwanese hikers who were led by a ex military type in his mid sixties. He instantly showed us the way down to the hot springs. This involved taking the trail that had been closed following the rock fall incident. A set of stairs carved out of the cliff lead steeply down the side of the cliff to the spring below. The bottom quarter of the stairs had been eroded away by a stream that had run over them. Ended up skiing down the bottom section on our feet and then managing to land at the bottom without falling.
The ex army granddad insisted that we join them in the hot spring, which was cut into the rocks below the stairs and then flowed into pools near the river below. He also insisted on feeding us plenty of his fruit and these crazy but delicious beans that came in a shell similar to a peanut. The hot spring was about the depth of one and a half bathtubs and the size of a large hot tub. The water was seriously hot just on the edge of being bearable….I managed to stay in for a bout 20 seconds and emerged looking like Id fallen asleep under a sun bed. Then watched the drill sergeant pensioner float face down in the water for about 2 minutes…how the hell he did that without batting a eyelid I don’t know….hard core…
The springs were the perfect destination at the end of the hike and 20minutes or so steaming away around the sides of the pool warmed and recovered my aching muscles. After being force feed about 4 full handfuls of the peanut/beans each by the ex army guy, we said goodbye and managed to work our way back up the slippery downward section of the stairway with some difficulty. Once we got to the top we crossed the river on the bridge and found the only way to access the road on the other side was through a tunnel with a locked steel gate in the middle. Had to climb over a crawl space gap at the top of the gate and below the tunnel roof. Sharp rocks hung from the roof with jagged bits of metal lining the top of the gate. The tunnel was pitch black and wet , had to use my ipod as a flashlight and luckily we both managed to scale the gate without doing ourselves serious damage…..
Turns out that the whole trail we had walked had been closed due to dangerous conditions…however we had no idea about this until we had to break ourselves out. We passed the ex army pensioners S.U.V. on the side of the road further up the hill. How his party got into the hot springs remains a mystery although it wouldn’t surprise me if they had climbed over the gate also…..a good group of folks to have met, like most Taiwanese they were fantastically friendly…
By the time we hit the next town down the valley it was pitch dark and we had been walking down the road for an hour using the light of my ipod….this included heading through a few tunnels where there was no light whatsoever…..not the best place in the world to be walking down a road with no sidewalk…..
Stopped for dinner in a local restaurant and had an amazing beef noodle stew…food always tastes so much better after a hard day of hiking. After dinner another 30mins walking through pitch black mountain tunnels and steep sided roads brought us back to the campsite…..had an earlyish night after politely declining an insistent but friendly offer to join a group of locals who shared the campsite for dinner…..Fairplay one of the best hikes Ive ever done…the scenery was stunning and the trails were well maintained and offered a varied walk with just the right amount of danger to keep you concentrating.
Next day did another amazing day hike up an even steeper mountain trail….this time there were chain sections where you were pretty much rock-climbing….we were followed by a friendly local dog for the first half of the trip who pretty much ran up the tougher sections putting us to shame….A bamboo forest at the top of the first section lead to a steep sided and narrow path that curved round the mountain high above the valley floor below…..we then walked down a steep set of stairs to the valley bottom and an awesome waterfall ( see photo) following this there were a series of river tunnels some of which rained water on your head…..We eventually reached a section of the trail that was so badly damaged by rockslides it had been closed off…..a series of waterfalls flowing over the path above a deep drop was enough to deflate our bravado and we turned back and checked out a mountainside temple back in the closest village instead………
Had the tent packed up by 5pm and were waiting at the bus stop for the last bus back to Walien in time to catch our train….all the tourist info in the area was in Mandarin and our best bet after getting conflicting advice from the locals was that there should be a bus between 5-6. There was…….. and he happily drove right by us shaking his head as we tried to wave him down (curses !*&$!! )….still not sure if we were in the wrong place to catch the bus of if the driver was just being a jerk. In any case if it was the former the roads were quiet enough for him to stop and tell us…meaning we can draw the conclusion that either way that bus driver was a indeed a jerk!…..
After spending a few minutes discussing our options for catching our train back to Taipei, a taxi carrying one guy stopped and the driver offered to drive us all the way back to Walien station for the same price as the bus fair would have been!…. no need to even negotiate, what a result!
After another pleasant train journey got back to my room in Taipei and slept like a log. A fantastic short trip to one of the coolest natural landscapes Ive ever been to. Its not hard to see why Taroko Gorge is Taiwan’s number one tourist attraction……A longer hiking trip to national parks even further to the south is planned for my final week in the country….really looking forward now, esp. as there are more hot spring trails….a hot bath halfway through your hike really helps you endurance…(hopefully the next ones wont requires us to break into and out of them though).
So in conclusion another highly enjoyable week in Taiwan. Enjoyed my teaching hours again, brushed up my Chinese history, and got some fantastic exercise…..cant wait to explore more of the city in the next few days then more of the island at the end of next week……………
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