[Taiwan] Chapter XLII: In which a new species of transportation, unknown to us, appears in Taroko

The Taroko National Park --- home to the Taroko Gorge --- is probably Taiwan's most-visited natural attraction, and our next destination in our clockwise circling of the island.

As already mentioned before, we have found Taiwan's public

transport system to be very convenient and made daily use of it, travelling by metros, buses and commuter trains for short distance trips, and by regular and express trains for long distance. While this was true also for getting to Hualien, the city that served as our base for visiting the park, and for getting from Hualien to the park itself every morning, when it came to moving within the park itself, the existing bus network --- with its small number of buses per day --- proved less than optimal. In one case, a hiking trail had a bus station at one end and not at the other, ostensibly requiring us to return to the trailhead to take the bus to the next trail; in another, we alighted at one point, explored the region, and returned to the same spot, only to find that there was no bus station there in the other direction, theoretically forcing us to travel onward whereas we wanted to go back; and in a third, portions of the only road crossing the park were closed to traffic for road work, allowing buses and cars to pass only once an hour, thus making the bus timetables we had almost irrelevant.

To allay these setbacks and cover the park in a timely manner, we therefore resorted to a form of transportation that we had not used heretofore, namely hitchhiking, which proved remarkably easy to obtain (for N, whose responsibility it is to talk to strangers), given the extremely kind and friendly nature of Taiwanese, both tourists and road workers.

As for the park itself, it is quite justifiably a world-famous attraction, with spectacular views of the gorge from its trails. We had planned on doing five hikes, but two of the trails (Tunnel of the Nine Turns and Baiyang) were closed, so did only three:
- Swallow Grotto: The trail follows a side road, hugging the marble cliffside midway between its top and its bottom, at times curving with the cliff, at times tunneling through it, allowing one to gaze down into the Liwu river raging below or to crane one's neck up to see the overcast sky above.
- Shakadang: The trail runs along the Shakadang river, its waters reflecting the sun in all shades of blue, and its course strewn with giant marble boulders.
- Heliu-Lushui: Less marble cliffs, but lots more butterflies, and just as beautiful as the other two.

Accommodations:
- Herhuan Hotel, Hualien (4 nights; nice)

Photo captions: (a-l) Taroko, Swallow Grotto trail; (m-cc) Taroko, Shakadang trail; (dd-mm) Taroko, Heliu-Lushui trail; (nn-uu) Taroko, bridges and buildings; (vv-yy) Hualien, incidental photos