Taroko Gorge
Advice for Taroko Gorge/Hualien trip
A thread from another forum:
Need advice on taroko gorge
taiwanho.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=1924
By the way, the link to the homepage of Taroko National Park that was posted in that thread on Nov 15, 2004 9:11 pm has changed to
taroko.gov.tw/ .
From that portal site you can go to the English homepage at
taroko.cm-media.com.tw/TarokoPor … fault.aspx
7 years ago, on the occasion of a business trip to Ilan County, i took the train to Taroko Village one afternoon and stayed overnight in a small hotel in Taroko Village. It was a weekday, and i was surprised that there were no other guests at the time, but the staff told me the hotel would be booked full over the weekend.
My plan was to go into Taroko Gorge the next day and take a bath in an outdoor hotspring (Wenshan Wenquan, 文山 溫泉) that had been recommended.
Unfortunately (maybe), i missed the morning bus to Tianxiang (天祥) (i overslept 
) and instead took a taxi to the “eternal springs shrine” (長春祠). I had a good work-out walking up to the shrine and to another small shrine high up in the cliff (took an uncountable number of stairs to get there).
I don’t take pictures or videos, but thanks to the internet that is no problem. 
Someone posted photos of that shrine here:
fotozon.blogspot.com/2008/12/tar … -trip.html
After coming back from the shrine i waited for the mid-day bus, went to Tianxiang (天祥), and walked from there to the hotspring.
Here is a short video showing what the access path and the outdoor basins of Wenshan Wenquan used to look like, taken by a guy from Singapore who apparently went there about 2 years after my visit:
pogledaj.name/wenshan-hot-sp … WDDfO9r37s
And here are some photos posted by the same author:
flickr.com/photos/shimmertje/59967330/
The day i went, i had to catch the last byus back to Taroko Village and therefore only dipped my hands into the hot water, but i prominsed myself that i would return one day to take a bath. Then, in 2005, i learned that earlier that year some rocks had fallen in the hotspring area and that someone got killed, and so the park authorities had closedthe hotspring (it apparently is still closed)