The Long Way Down - Hualien and Taroko National Park

Before arriving in Taiwan, we booked our exit tickets leaving from Kaohsiung, the second largest city in Taiwan located at the south end of the island. Originally, we intended to take Taiwan's bullet train down which would have taken just under 2 hours and traversed the west side of the country probably so fast we wouldn't have seen a thing. But after being convinced by Susan, our friend from Granada, that the more beautiful, and of course adventurous side of Taiwan, is the eastern seaboard, we decided to see what we could make work going that way.
You see, the east side of Taiwan is extremely mountainous and much less inhabited than the west. There are miles and miles of untouched ocean coast line which was a beautiful sight as we traveled south, albeit at a crawling pace in comparison to the high speed rail (HSR) of the west. For perspective, it took us 2.5 hours to go from Taipei to Hualien which is only about 1/3rd of the way down to Kaohsiung, vs. 2 hours all the way to Kaohsiung on the HSR system. So what did we do over here? Taroko National Park, that's what.

After an excellent week of exploring and enjoying Taipei, we were ready to see the countryside. Here's a quick summary of the rest of Taipei with pictures...

And here's a summary of Taroko National Park with a movie...



To access the park (admission to which is free by the way) we were presented with a few options.

1. We could hire a taxi or a car for the day which would be more costly than our style. Somewhere in the range of $100-$200.


2. We could have gone on a tour with a bus full of the lazy and/or decrepit which would have been affordable, but still not our style. $25-$45 each.


3. Or we could risk taking the public shuttle from Hualien bus station for which there exists very little information online. Cost for this isn't even enough to worry about.

Which option do you think we went with? As it turns out, the Hualien bus station is right next to the train station, so as soon as we arrived in town, we walked over to find out more about this elusive Taroko public shuttle. A very nice man at the bus station who seemed to already know exactly what we were looking for handed us a brochure with the most updated list of times for the shuttle and all of its stops before the park entrance as well as within the park. He even let us know we could use our Easy Cards (Taiwan's version of London's Oyster Card, except it works country-wide and you can even use it to buy late night essentials from 7-Eleven such as snacks, or coffee, or postage stamps). The next day we caught the first shuttle in to the park and from there just walked to the attractions. We could have seen even more if we had taken the bus to some of the park's other stops, but after about 8 hours we were blasted and ready to come back.

The next day we got up early to catch our next train to Kaohsiung. This one was about five hours. If we had timed it perfectly, we actually could have gotten to Kaohsiung faster by backtracking to Taipei on the same train we took to Hualien and then taking the HSR all the way down; however, one of the themes of our trip is to avoid taking the same road twice, and why not enjoy the rest of the natural beauty that Taiwan has to offer. Hint: It was worth it.

Here's some supplemental cost information:

• Train from Taipei to Hualien. NT$440/ea (~$14.50)
• Bus from Hualien to Taroko and back: NT$80/ea (~$2.60)
• Train from Hualien to Kaohsiung: NT$684/ea (~$22.50)
• Hostel for two nights in Hualien. Private room with bathroom: NT$2,400 (~$79)
• Advice and encouragement from a friend who knows the country well: Priceless