Greg and Mandy's Travels

Before the Chinese and before the Japanese, somewhere around the 17th or 18th century, indigenous tribes finally traversed the central mountain range of the island from the west, and settled in the area near the east coast now known as Taroko Gorge, forming their own tribal identity and customs.

Taroko Gorge is an impressive 19-km-long canyon and takes its name from the Truku tribe, one of the 16 tribes of Taiwan, and the one that settled in this area all those years ago. Though often referred to as the largest marble canyon in the world and nicknamed “The Marble Gorge” because of the large quantities of the stone in it, the rock is actually a unique combination of marble, granite and quartz micas, giving it a wide range of colours and textures.

It’s rugged. In about 60 kilometres the landscape rises from sea level to some of the tallest peaks in Taiwan at over 3400 meters. That’s steep!

As we know, the Japanese ruled Taiwan as part of their expansionism from 1895 through to the end of the second world war, when Taiwan was handed back to the ROC. During this period there were a lot of uprisings and skirmishes, and the indigenous tribes were active in these from their bases in the inaccessible hills, especially in the uprising of 1930, so the Japanese administration started building bridges and forming roads (well, trails really) into the hills up the gorges to move troops and supplies, and establish settlements to control the inhabitants. Over time these trails have been widened to tracks, then roads.

The road all the way through the mountains to the opposite coast, known as the Central Cross-Island Highway was finally completed in 1960 by demobilised soldiers who’d fled the mainland behind Chiang Kai-shek more than a decade earlier. It is still the only road spanning the country.

However, the island of Taiwan was formed by the movements of tectonic plates, and the plates are still moving today, so the area is prone to frequent earthquakes. When you couple these earthquakes with frequent typhoons, snows on the high peaks in Winter, and the torrents of rain cascading down the cliff faces, you are faced with frequent landslides and rockfalls, so the roads and bridges are frequently wiped out. Many of them are on their third construction, and you can often see the remains of old bridges next to the new ones.

Most of the original road was hewn out of the sides of the gorge cliffs, and these haven’t lasted well. Nowadays most rebuilds are done by boring huge tunnels through the mountains big enough to cater for the large number of tourist buses plying the road every day. At the park entrance, visitors can even opt to borrow a hard hat free of charge for the duration of their visit.

The area was declared a national park in 1986, and is a lovely destination for a day trip. We were picked up by our minivan around 8am, and taken up the mountain to see as much as we could before the large tour buses arrived. Got through the first site ok, but we were just beaten to the second trail at Buluowan by 5 bus loads of mature age Chinese tourists. Rats.

They are not at all fazed by crowds. The problem is that they just block whole paths to get photos. By the time Aunty Jing yells at the whole group to get their attention, badgers them into coming and standing as a group in the middle of the path, yells at everybody she can’t see the face of, moves them all around, demonstrates the crazy pose she wants them all to adopt, gets them to practice it, then tries to focus the camera, counts down to one and takes several photos, there is a roadblock back to town.

Anyway, we put up with it at the suspension bridge, and left before they did, so we didn’t see them again till lunchtime when they had to wait for us to vacate our table so they could eat.

Saw lots of gorges, waterfalls, temples, trails, tunnels and suspension bridges, so I won’t bore you will all the details, but around lunchtime we arrived at the town of Tianxiang at the top of the gorge where we enjoyed lunch at an indigenous restaurant, before coming out to watch the local monkeys try to grab food off people who bought lunch at 7-Eleven and didn’t know to secure it properly before exiting.

More gorges and trails after lunch, including a steep climb to a mountainside pagoda, before coming down the road and exiting the park. A stop at a lemon juice shop and the local beach on the Pacific Ocean before being dropped back home around 4:30. Of the 8 in the tour group, 5 of us were from Melbourne (3 from Mt Waverley).

After a bit of a rest, we took the local bus down to the Hualien (Dongdamen) Night Market where we walked around and had a light tea. The market is very large, and was formed by the joining of 4 smaller markets, each specialising in their heritage cuisine (indigenous, Japanese, Chinese and Hokkien). As well as food, there were lots of amusements and sideshows, very like a country show.

Taroko Gorge

Taroko Gorge

Taroko Gorge

Taroko Gorge

Hualien Night Market