Ever since Jen's dad and his friend told us about the cycle tour that they did in Taiwan, we've wanted to go. Since Taiwan only recently started re-opening post-covid, we were a bit unsure about how the self-testing and quarantine worked so we decided to arrive a week early before starting the bike tour. It turned out that as long as you self-tested negative every other day (for 7 days), you could still go out to eat/travel/visit, so after staying a couple of days in Taipei, we decided to take a train to XinCheng to visit Taroko National Park.
On our first day in Taroko we checked out the major highlights. We took a local bus over to the furthest attraction and then slowly made our way back.
This trail was created early on and was used to build the infrastructure of the dam in the region. It’s about 2km long and passes through 9 tunnels along the way. Unfortunately for us, part of the trail was closed for restoration (due to a landslide), so we could only access the pathway up until the second tunnel.
We hopped on the next bus and made our way to the tunnel of nine turns. Here you walk along an old section of the highway (700m x 2) where you can admire the proximity of the cliff-side and the man-made tunnels.
The "swallow grotto" name comes from the holes on the cliff side where swallows come to nest. This trail used to be a part of the main road, but because the area was so popular for visitors to stop at, it was causing traffic issues. They've since created an alternate route for vehicles so visitors can now explore the area without causing traffic issues, but you still have to be careful of the occasional tourist vans/buses passing along this road.
This was our last stop for the day. We first stopped to eat a late instant-noodles lunch, walked along the trail to visit the shrine, then caught a bus back to our B&B in XinCheng.
