Toroko

We arrived in Toroko Gorge this evening. It is on the North East of Taiwan. I now fully understand why the Dutch called Taiwan, "Formosa" when they settled here. Formosa means "beautiful island." The whole trip up was absolutely incredible today. The majority of the drive featured desolate beaches with water shining every color of blue imaginable on one side and bamboo forested mountains on the other. Just when I thought the views couldn't get any better, we entered Toroko Gorge.

Toroko has the smallest, sketchiest, most stunning road I have ever driven on. The majority of the road is barely 1.5 car lanes big. The roads are cut through the marble and limestone cliffs. In the river bed below are massive bolders strewn about everywhere. On the otherside of the road is just a massive rock face. It looks exactly like the painted mountain schemes you always see in old Chinese paintings. Where waterfalls seem to drop forever and little pagodas sit perched on their ledges. A total dreamscape.

It took us 6 hours to get here because we stopped so many times to take pictures and look at the view. We haven't even seen half of it yet. We are staying at a great hotel in the middle of the gorge. It has an infiniti pool on the roof surrounded by the forest and on the bottom floor has a beautiful lap pool, sauna, work out room, bowling alley etc. I would have stayed here at least two days but we just turned on the TV and saw that the typhoon that was heading towards Hong Kong has switched paths and will probably nail where we are currently staying head on. So we now have to cut our trip short and race back through the mountain pass before it hits. I think it will be at least a 10 hour drive tomorrow. Not good for the back. These roads are the last place you want to be driving in a typhoon though. LAME! I am feeling good and really like it up here. Stupid typhoons. I guess I will just have to come back another time. Perhaps with YOU!