I’ve heard really great things about a national park here in Taiwan called Taroko Gorge. It’s supposed to be huge and one of the top things you visit if you’re in the country.
I went on Reddit and found a small tour group company called Hualien Outdoors. I emailed the owner, Matt, last week and confirmed that we’d do a hike through the Zhuilu Old Trail on Wednesday (tomorrow). I gave him the address of our hostel in Taipei for him to pick us up in the morning to do the hour and a half drive to Taroko. That’s when he told me that they work out of Hualien City NOT Taipei. Whoops.
Hualien is about 80 miles south of Taipei, a 2 1/2 hour train ride to get there. Within an hour, I booked a new hostel for 2 nights and we ordered train tickets. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to cancel the same number of nights at our current hostel because they need a 3 day notice. With the current hostel being $30 a night and the new hostel being $15 a night per person, we figured we might as well just keep it and leave most of our stuff there to travel lighter.
A few days ago, a friend of Joanna’s parents recommended that we check out a seafood buffet that they’ve been to in Taipei. The restaurant is called Harbor and it books out weeks in advance. Lilly was able to get one for us today for lunch.
We arrived half an hour early per her instructions and the line got really long really fast with everyone having reservations too. Besides the babies, I think Joanna and I were the youngest people in the line. Everyone was like +40s.
The doors opened at 11:30 and everyone started rushing towards the food as if they starved themselves for days preparing for this moment. I avoided the shellfish area to avoid getting knocked over by an old Chinese lady.
There were a lot of options to choose from: made to order soups, pasta, and pizza, prime rib, roasted turkey, various chinese soups and stir fry dishes, and super fresh seafood. The buffet was about $30 per person.
I think I had like 7-8 plates of food. Beer was also unlimited but I had 2 glasses at most since I didn’t want to fill up on cheap Taiwanese beer that I could get at a 7-11 for $1 a pint. Overall the food was really good, specifically the seafood. The other stuff like pasta and beef was kind of meh.
We didn’t finish eating until after we started hating ourselves, which was probably around the 2nd round of desserts.
Headed back to the hostel to grab our stuff and to the Taipei train station to catch the 4:26 train to Hualien.
Occasionally I wonder if people look at the two of us when we’re on our phones and think that we should be interacting like a couple. When in reality we’re inseparable for an entire week and don’t run out of things to talk about.
When the train arrived I was surprised it was very similar to the bullet trains we took in Japan. It was clean and comfortable. Unfortunately it was already dark outside so I couldn’t judge how quickly it was moving in comparison but overall a pleasant experience.
Joanna and I both passed out right away on the train for over 2 hours. Jet lag is still an issue right now. We’re staying at Journey Hostel and Bar which was less than a 7 min walk from the train station. I’ll post pictures tomorrow but it’s got a very cool vibe to it. They have a dog in the lobby and a really nice koi fish pond. Tomorrow we’ll get (correctly) picked up by our tour guide Peter at 7am so expect some awesome mountain pics on the next blog post.
