Gorge-ous Hualien

Gorge-ous Hualien
Hualien, Taiwan

Hualien, Taiwan

After our super fast, comfy and clean train from Taipei we arrived in Hualien just in time for the heavens to open. We knew our hostel was only a few minutes walk from the train station so we tried to wait out the rain and eventually gave up and walked through it arriving damp and dripping at our hostel.

Here is where we had our first taste of travel in Taiwan outside of Taipei where seemingly very few tourists venture. The people at our hostel were very friendly and smiley and thankfully with the power of google translate we managed to get checked into our room. Hualien is a funny little town, it is pretty much just a base to stay to visit Toroko Gorge the reason we were there and whilst the town was much bigger than we expected it was definitely not set up for foreign travellers. As we were about to discover the Taiwanese like to travel extensively themselves around their home country and most other visitors are from mainland China so all the tours are in Chinese, but never ones to be put off by a language barrier we got the nice lady at our hostel to book us onto a Dolphin watching cruise and a day around Toroko Gorge.

Our first tour was pretty cool, we were picked up at our hostel and delivered to the boat where we were the only white faces in a sea of Chinese faces and the captain was calling out names to load us onto the appropriate boats. We were listening hard for our names in amongst all the Wang’s, Li’s and Chang’s and when the Captain called for ‘Chuck Lorry’ every face in the crowd turned and looked at us. Interesting pronunciation but a least we got loaded. With our compulsory life jackets on we set off with our shiny brochure full of pictures of orcas, sperm whales, humpbacks and dolphins and it was quite a relief that this was a ‘what we might see’ list rather than a menu!! The boat was pretty big and sturdy and it was a lovely calm day but much to our surprise there were at least 8 people getting sea sick on the boat. I can only assume that the Chinese are not natural sailors. Within 20 minutes of getting out of the harbour we saw our first sight, a beautiful pod of dolphins just giving us a flash of their fins and tails. Sadly these tours are not the most eco friendly and all the boats steamed towards the dolphins causing them to dive and leave but in a country renowned for eating anything and everything that swims it is refreshing that they appreciate these amazing animals are a good tourist income so it is a step in the right direction.

That evening we ventured into the city to find some dinner and found ourselves in the middle of a street parade made up mainly of young tattooed men dancing around some huge wooden frames many of which were carrying religious statues, some were wearing huge costumes and the last man in the parade was strapped to a wooden frame wearing just red shorts and a head scarf and was being bombarded with firecrackers. It was amazing to watch and it was only when we reverted to our best friend Mr Google that we managed to find out that this is a really famous festival strongly affiliated with gang culture in Taiwan. The man in the red shorts is Master Handan, whilst his identity is unknown it is suspected that he is a Taoist God of war and throwing fireworks at him will allegedly bring you wealth. Another story is that he was a gangster and locals were allowed to throw fireworks at him to repent his wrongdoings. Either way you definitely don’t want to be the poor bugger who draws the straw of being Master Handan in this parade as he looked battered and charred and the guys carrying his platform who also happened to be firing him with firecrackers were also chugging beers and at one point very nearly dropped him. What an amazing and unsuspecting surprise that was, good on you Hualin and I hope Master Handan survived the rest of the parade!

Our final day in Hualien and we were off to explore Toroko Gorge, possibly one of the most iconic places in Taiwan and the place that most sensible tourist just visit from Taipei with lots of other English speaking tourists and a guide who can communicate with them. We hopped in our minibus with anticipation and after a blank look to our ‘Hello, How are you?’ to our guide and driver we soon knew that this was going to be a long day. Thankfully our lucky stars were shining on us when a lovely young Singaporean girl, ying, joined the tour and told us that the driver had asked if she would translate for us for the day. Phew!

So Toroko translates into “Magnificent and Beautiful” and it certainly lived up to its name.

So here are some factoids about Toroko Gorge:

Taroko Gorge and its surrounding area are well known for their abundant supply of marble, leading to its nickname, “The Marble Gorge”. The rock now seen in Taroko began over 200 million years ago as sediment on the bottom of the ocean. As the sediment collected, it was subject to increasingly large amounts of pressure which eventually hardened it into limestone. Over the past 100 million years, tectonic compression between the Philippine Sea Plate and the Eurasian Plate supplied additional pressure that metamorphosed the limestone into marble. Uplifting forces from the plate collision pushed this rock above the surface of the ocean to where we see it today. The region is still being uplifted by approximately 0.5 cm per year.

The gorge itself was carved into the marble by the erosive power of the Liwu River.

In addition, there are known to be jade in this gorge. This jade is only found in Taiwan and the jade from this area supplies the jade market in Hualien

Our tour of Toroko was awesome and brilliant and without Ying translating for us we would have been in trouble as there were lots of ‘go there and look at that and be back at x o-clock’ which would have been fun with no mobile network and no google translate to help us. We got lots of odd looks from the other tourists who were surprised to see us in a sea of Chinese faces. There was one long walk on the tour and we just followed along and stood looking interested when the guide chatted away and our friend Ying translated anything particularly necessary. However there was one minor part of the tour information that we missed out on… at the end of the long walk we came to a cave where everyone suddenly changed into reef sandals and ponchos and whipped out umbrellas and started paddling through a cold deep waterway into the cave. Annoyingly we had our waterproofs in the minibus, not much use to us now. So we took off our shoes and socks, protected our cameras as much as possible and followed the leader. It turns out that this was Water Sheet cave, so named because water pours through the roof in sheets. It was icy cold which was a refreshing break from the heat but the walkway was only wide enough for one person at a time and with the other more prepared people barging through with their umbrellas and waterproofs we very nearly ended up much wetter than anticipated. Thankfully we survived and back in the baking sun we were dry and making our way back to the bus through the unfinished tunnels which had signs of fresh rock fall from just 30 minutes earlier, I am not sure that our hard hats would help much if that fell on us!! Unsurprisingly with the regular seismic activity people are frequently injured and killed by rock fall and I only discovered upon writing this blog that for the very same reasons the road into Toroko Gorge is one of the top 5 most dangerous roads in the world. Well let’s just say I am glad I read that after this trip!

So it has been an interesting few days and probably a taster of what language barriers we have in the weeks ahead but it is another location off the list. Hualien, Done.

Next stop Green Island!