Thanks for all the great comments everyone. My daughter keeps asking if we’ll see snow at christmas. I doubt it, but sounds like we’ll have a good time anyway. 
Here are some photos of the Chihben river valley upstream from the National Forest Park. This is shot is about one 1/1.5 hour’s trek upriver. The white thing in the river is my friend floating with his backpack downstream:
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Here’s a place where we usually camp. Can’t see too clearly, but there’s a waterfall coming down at 12 o’clock:
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This waterfall is not so far upstream:
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from a mountain ridge that needs to be crossed:
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another valley shot:
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I have more that show the marble walls, but I’ll need scan them. Took them about 8 years ago. There are 2 points at which the gorge narrows into a solid marble chasm and the only way forward, for the first juncture, is to swim or hike the up to the ridge and come down the other side. For the second one, swimming is the only option as it’s sheer cliffs for about 100 feet on each side. I put this place up there with anywhere I have been in Southeast Asia.
What a great looking spot. So there are no roads I take it where you go? Just straight river tracing up.
The marble walls rising up from the blue river look like those off Hwy 14 heading east of Hualien. That’s another mini-Taroko but not as remote.
Your spot looks just about perfect for wilderness camping. Thanks a million for sharing. Robert Storey was right to write about it.
Straight up river tracing and wilderness trekking, no roads. You’ll have to ford the river about 15 times to get to that camping spot, chest-high in some areas with a fairly strong current and slippery rocks underfoot. But it’s all worth it. Is highway 14 in the coastal mountains? I’ll check that spot out sometime.
[quote=“banana smoothie”]Here are some photos of the Chihben river valley upstream from the National Forest Park. This is shot is about one 1/1.5 hour’s trek upriver. The white thing in the river is my friend floating with his backpack downstream:
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Here’s a place where we usually camp. Can’t see too clearly, but there’s a waterfall coming down at 12 o’clock:
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This waterfall is not so far upstream:
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from a mountain ridge that needs to be crossed:
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another valley shot:
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I have more that show the marble walls, but I’ll need scan them. Took them about 8 years ago. There are 2 points at which the gorge narrows into a solid marble chasm and the only way forward, for the first juncture, is to swim or hike the up to the ridge and come down the other side. For the second one, swimming is the only option as it’s sheer cliffs for about 100 feet on each side. I put this place up there with anywhere I have been in Southeast Asia.[/quote]
Beautiful pictures !!
It’s actually the eastern extension of the route that starts outside Taichung but is broken by the Nenggao Trail. Do you know where Liyu Lake, just outside Hualien is? Hwy 14 starts here. The pic I took is from a side stream in an area called the Muga-something corridor. As you head up Hwy 14 you’ll see a red bridge a few km up from the police checkpoint. Turn left here.
I checked my sunriver maps and it seems there is a small road for a short distance following the Chihben River upstream from the forest recreation area. But after that the river runs through completely untouched wilderness. Do you follow the road at all or get into the river right away? Which season is best?
Have to say that shower waterfall is super.
Mucha Man
Yeah, there is a small paved road that goes up past the nat’l forest park, on the opposite side of the river. The road goes for about 1/2 or 3/4 a kilometer until you see some gates for a driveway leading to private property. The road also continues to the left of the gates, but it looks pretty small and grown-over with foliage. You can park your car or scooter at the gates -just don’t block the entrance- and then walk around the gates downhill, over a bridge, and on towards a plateau that overlooks a lovely bend in the river. A couple of dogs will start barking like mad and they’ll approach you, but they won’t attack (at least they haven’t in the 6 or 7 times I’ve been there). There’s some sort of gazebo with out-houses there that are owned by a man who is very friendly to people looking to cross his property and explore the river valley. If he’s there, he’ll probably invite you over to sit with him for tea. One time he said that he actually prefers foreigners going down there because we generally do not leave trash behind.
There’s been a big landslide across the river, which you will notice as soon as you hit the bottom of the trail that leads down to the river, but other than that, there’s nothing but what I imagine is what much of Taiwan looked like 150-200 years ago, when nature ran riot over Formosa!
Another note about trekking it: it’s basically all river-fording, and stone-hopping, with a little bit of climbing up and around huge boulders and cliffs -but nothing extraordinarily challenging, though I did catch my friend by the arm just before he plummeting off a wall that would have caused serious injury. Be careful. There’s an amazing swimming hole at that first ‘marble chasm’ I mentioned previously. To get past this, you have to scramble up the side of the mountain and make your way down the other side, and there’s no real trail to see; add to this a full canopy overhead and it’s easy to get disoriented. I’ll scan more pix over the weekend and post them.
[quote=“Mucha Man”]What a great looking spot. So there are no roads I take it where you go? Just straight river tracing up.
The marble walls rising up from the blue river look like those off Hwy 14 heading east of Hualian. That’s another mini-Taroko but not as remote.
Your spot looks just about perfect for wilderness camping. Thanks a million for sharing. Robert Storey was right to write about it.[/quote]
wow that looks like a fantastic place for a swim. Love the color of the water too
[quote=“tommy525”][quote=“Muzha Man”]What a great looking spot. So there are no roads I take it where you go? Just straight river tracing up.
The marble walls rising up from the blue river look like those off Hwy 14 heading east of Hualian. That’s another mini-Taroko but not as remote.
Your spot looks just about perfect for wilderness camping. Thanks a million for sharing. Robert Storey was right to write about it.[/quote]
wow that looks like a fantastic place for a swim. Love the color of the water too[/quote]
Yes, the water color of the eastern rivers is captivating. The most brilliant exampel I have seen is the river at Wanrong south of Hualien where the old Japanese era logging camp called Lintianshan sits. The water was an unreal greenish yellow, so rich in color I thought it had to be pollution. But it’s completelty natural, the result of limestone washing into the rivers upsream.
Back on the Forest Recreation Park side of the river, if one climbs to the highest point of the park’s well-maintained path network there is a two-storey wooden lookout with a very good view. At dusk, barking deer will come out on the path below and forage. The lookout is perched halfway up a hillside that continues quite a bit further up and there is a rough path that connects it with an old Forestry Road. The connecting path isn’t marked on the Sun River Map 22, but the road is. However, it has devolved back to a path for much of its length and probably is visited only by hunters these days. The road beginning at the mouth of the valley is sealed then becomes a concrete one until several kilometers after the abandoned police station when it becomes a path.
This doesn’t have much to do with river tracing, but the park and the lookout is worth a detour.
Well, we returned yesterday from a 5-day jaunt, through the new tunnel to Ilan (which cuts a huge chunk of time off the drive), down past Hualien (didn’t stop this time except to piss at McDonalds), inland to Guanshan (in a beautiful rice-growing valley in Taitung County, just a half hour or so from Taitung), then two nights in the Royal Chihpen Hot Springs Spa Hotel (or whatever they call it) and two days of hiking and exploring the Taitung area, before cutting accross the island and coming back through Tainan and Chiayi (visiting family at each). It was a great trip and we’ll definitely return. We were also very happy to run into a regular forumosan and his family, who were also staying at the Royal Chihpen Hotel, and they too seemed to be having a blast.
I think we’ve all seen the fantastic coastline going down to Hualien.
Here’s the rice-growing valley at Guanshan, where we spent our first night.
Another view:
Locals have tried hard to create a tourist industry in addition to rice farming and I’d bet some times of year/week it must be maddeningly crowded with tour buses for the karaoke, gokarting, paintball, and bike rentals. Fortunately for us, Wednesday, December 24 was not one of thos times and it was just a quiet rural town.
Every hotel in Guanshan has bike rentals, in part because the town built this beautiful bike path that makes a nice 12 km loop down the center of the valley, then up and along the base of the hills and back. We did the loop and even my non-bike-riding wife got a thrill out of it.
We took a long windy road up over the mountains to the coastal highway, pulled over at one spot and saw a swarm of wild monkeys. That was great, but we quickly jumped back in the car when they almost mobbed us, thinking my daughter had food for them (we didn’t feed them).
Chihpen Hot Springs is a resort area with a few dozen hotels crammed on a steep hillside, packed with tourists on the weekends, who want to soak in the tubs and eat eggs boiled in hotspring water. I believe the Royal Chihpen is one of the nicest hotels there. Here’s what a room there looks like.
We found it to be very clean, comfortable and professional. Also a lot of fun. Soaked in tubs morning and night (complex of hot, medium, cold, lavender scented, tea scented, herbal, sauna, etc., with jets on every part of hte body, along with a large pool, all open air, surrounded by forest). They also had miniature golf, badminton, etc, etc, along with the endless all-you-can-eat buffets, so one can laze one days comfortably, while getting fatter by the day. Here’s some kids from the terrific aborigine song & dance shows they offer in the evenings. YES, it’s all very tacky and stupid, but a lot of fun nonetheless. Our daughter LOVED the aborigine show.
As mentioned by another poster above, there’s a nice Forest Recreation Area 10 minutes from the hotel and we did the climb to the lookout tower on top. Very steep steps up and down (definitely consider the more moderate middle route if you’re not a masochistic), cool banyan trees and more monkeys.
Drove to some dairy farm on a hill and looked at the cows. Very beautiful countryside. Then up to a high terrace from which we’d seen Fancy Janet go paragliding once on Discovery Channel. Incredible view of hte valley and then. . . WE WENT SLEDDING! True. Grass sledding, but it was still an awesome thing to do the day after Christmas. Here’s a video of it:
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Cool, huh? As you can hear, my daughter especially enjoyed that.
Then, driving home we past countless stands selling these Buddha fruits, apparently Taitung’s official fruit (cool looking, but not all that great to eat in my opinion).
The drive to Tainan was surprisingly fast. THen we regrettfully worked our way back home.
NEXT TIME, I definitely plan to ride my bike in a loop from Hualien to Taitung and back on Highways 11 and 9, one down the coast, the other up the valley, as both roads were amazingly broad, smooth, in good condition, with wide bike lanes, and rolled gently through the terrific scenery. They’re absolutely perfect for cycling, so it was hardly surprising we saw hundreds of lycra-clad cyclists out there enjoying terrific Taiwan.
Two thumbs up for sure. 
Awesome ! I loved the Royal Chihpen the one time I was there just about when they opened up. Great area to be in. Your daughter forgot the V sign in the pics tho 
Oh and that fruit !! I use to hate it but since then Iv come to love it. ITs fantastic and very hard to transport because its easily damaged. I dont think theres many places in the world where you can get that fruit. I dont even know the english name for it.
And Taitung is famous for it.
That and the wood fish (the fish they toast until its wood like and then they shave it and the shavings go on top of toh fuh (especially in a japanese restaurant). TAsty.
The grass sledding looks like tons of fun. Wouldnt want to wipe out tho.
Cherimoya in American English and custard apples in British. Nowadays what you often see in Taiwan are atemoya, which as Wikipedia explains are a cross between the cherimoya and sweetsop.
A really good one is one of the great tropical fruit experiences, but they do not ship well and have a very short period at which they are perfectly ripe. A few places around Taidong, including the cafe across from the airport, sell cherimoya shakes (Shijia niunai 釋迦牛奶), a variant on the standard papaya milkshake. Heavenly.
They are very sweet and an interesting diversion – I don’t dislike them – but they’re not my favorite fruit because (a) while they’re very sweet, I’m not so fond of the grainy aspect, as though there are actual coarse grains of sugar inside them, (b) fairly tedious to eat because too many seeds, © fairly messy to eat because they’re so soft and mushy. But they do look cool and are perfect bi bi (worship) fruit. We bought a few huge ones for ama/agong and for our nanny.
You’ve got to try the atemoya that Feiren linked too, which in Chinese are called fengli shijia i.e. pineapple Buddha heads. Still has plenty of seeds, but it seems like there’s more flesh there, which has a firmer almost mango-like texture.
I know it’s almost sacrilegious to say, but I think a ripe fengli shijia is even better than a mango.
Wow i DIDNT KNOW that the seeds are TOXIC !!! good to know.
when they make the shakes do they remove the seeds? They better.
[quote=“alidarbac”]You’ve got to try the atemoya that Feiren linked too, which in Chinese are called fengli shijia i.e. pineapple Buddha heads. Still has plenty of seeds, but it seems like there’s more flesh there, which has a firmer almost mango-like texture.
[snip]
I know it’s almost sacrilegious to say, but I think a ripe fengli shijia is even better than a mango.[/quote]
Yes the atemoya are amazing. And that is sacrilegious, but it may be true if you get a good one. You’ve got a better chance of getting a great mango though. The atemoya’s scent is pretty amazing too.
They are messy and tricky to eat with the seeds. Best done outside on a Taidong beach or by one of those crystal mountain streams.
Tommy, they filter the seeds out in the shakes.
[quote=“Feiren”][quote=“alidarbac”]You’ve got to try the atemoya that Feiren linked too, which in Chinese are called fengli shijia i.e. pineapple Buddha heads. Still has plenty of seeds, but it seems like there’s more flesh there, which has a firmer almost mango-like texture.
[snip]
I know it’s almost sacrilegious to say, but I think a ripe fengli shijia is even better than a mango.[/quote]
Yes the atemoya are amazing. And that is sacrilegious, but it may be true if you get a good one. You’ve got a better chance of getting a great mango though. The atemoya’s scent is pretty amazing too.
They are messy and tricky to eat with the seeds. Best done outside on a Taidong beach or by one of those crystal mountain streams.
Tommy, they filter the seeds out in the shakes.[/quote]
so someone actually knows the seeds are toxic??? Thats good to know. Heck I didnt know I was flirting with danger when I was eating them. Nobody ever told me nuthing bout the seeds?
Didnt I just read also that the skin can cause paralysis?? ugh