Day 2 in Taiwan started early with a 5:50 am pick up time by our tour guide. We stopped at a few other hotels to pick people up and our first stop was the airport! We arrived at 6:40 am and hopped on to a 7:00 am flight to Hualian airport. It was only about a 30 minute flight and our destination for the day was Toroko National Park.
It was a crazy hot day, but the park was beautiful. We made many stops along the drive to take pictures of the scenic backdrops, do a little hiking or see the swallow caves, temples or beautiful bridges.
There were a couple places where we had to wear helmets because of falling rocks. One area of the walk was actually closed recently because a woman had been killed by a falling rock. I think they had to the pictures, really!
It's hard to see in the pictures how beautiful the gorge was. All of the stone is marble! So as you can guess, one of this regions biggest exports is marble.
Here is one of my favorite pictures of the day!
Our tour guide was very entertaining and told us at the beginning of the tour that "marble is marbelous!" We were excited from the start. She took us to this bridge as opposed to the one that you have to pay to cross. Since she was a local from the area, she had some interesting info. We even stopped at her mom's house on the way home so that she could pick up something for dinner!
For lunch, we stopped at a restaurant in the National park. We had bamboo rice which is famous in the area. The piece of bamboo below was filled with rice.
One of our last stops in the gorge was the Eternal Springs Shrine. There were several hundred men who were killed while building the highway through the gorge and this shrine was in remembrance of them.
Of course, with any tour, they try to sell you something. Our last few stops were for Taiwan souvenirs and a marble factory. I do love Buddha statues and all, but I think I'd rather have a house than a US$200,000 marble statue!
Our last stop before hitting up the train station was the beach. We took a group photo before we all parted ways.
The train ride home was about 2 1/2 hours. The first 2 hours and 15 minutes were in a train where the air conditioning was broken. Not cool.
With only 15 minutes left in our trip, they pulled another train up to the stop and the whole train disembarked and got on a new train. Much better!
After we got back to our hotel, we headed to the Shinlin night market. We found some yummy foods to snack on and we wandered the streets and alleys enjoying the sights and trying to avoid the Stinky Tofu smell! We also worked on perfecting the two-person self-portrait.
Success.
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