Reservations open for a nine night trip to Taroko and Taiwan's east coast in spring or fall

Marble, water, and a road cut by hand

The Liwu River runs through marble. The stone began as limestone on a seabed. Pressure and heat cooked it when this island was pushed up, and it now stands in grey and white bands. The range is still rising, roughly five millimeters a year. The river keeps cutting down at about the same rate. Between them they have cut a gorge nineteen kilometers long. In places the walls lean in over the water.

The road along it was cut between 1956 and 1960, mostly with hand tools and explosives. More than two hundred workers died doing it. You can still read the work in the rock. Tunnels have rough openings punched out toward the drop, and drill scars run in straight lines across a wall. Water seeps from joints in the marble and leaves pale streaks, with small ferns growing in the cracks.

Days here are short walks rather than long ones. The thing worth looking at is within reach of your hand.

Mountains end in the ocean along Highway 9

North and south of the gorge the Central Range simply stops. At Qingshui the cliffs stand more than eight hundred meters above the water and fall straight into the Pacific. The old road was blasted into that face, and the current one runs mostly in tunnels behind it. The seabed drops away fast offshore, so the water close in is dark blue rather than green.

Further south the coast flattens a little. At Shitiping the shore is a shelf of tilted sandstone, cut into steps and pools by the sea. Sanxiantai has a footbridge of eight arches out to a small rocky island. Between them the coastal railway and Highway 11 stay within sight of each other. The villages along them are mostly Amis.

We use the train for two of the longer legs. It is quieter than the road, and the windows on the ocean side are the reason to reserve seats early.

What is still closed after the 2024 earthquake?

On 3 April 2024 a magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck offshore near Hualien. The gorge took the worst of it. Whole slopes came down into the river, tunnels were blocked, and the park closed the same morning. Aftershocks kept moving rock for months afterward.

The picture is still uneven. Some short trails and the shrine near the mouth of the gorge have reopened. Others have not, including the high cliff path and the length of old road with the arched windows. Reopening dates have been announced and then moved more than once. The typhoon season from July to October brings fresh rockfall every year.

So the plan does not lean on the gorge. Most nights are on the coast or in the valley. Gorge time is whatever is open on your dates, and the operating company confirms that in the week before you go. If the gorge is the only reason you want to come, this may not be the year to come.

Allow two full days for the rift valley

The rift valley lies between the Central Range and the low Coastal Range. It is thirty kilometers wide at most, and it is the calmer half of this trip. Rice grows in flat blocks from the road to the foot of the mountains, two crops a year. In March the young plants stand in water that holds a reflection of the whole range.

Chishang and Guanshan are the towns to walk out from. Both rent bicycles and both are flat. Lanes run for kilometers between the fields with nothing on them. At Ruisui there are hot springs the color of weak tea, high in iron, in plain concrete pools.

The valley is drier than the coast, and in October it is several degrees cooler than Taipei. Local trains stop at every small station and are rarely full. Nothing here is dramatic. That is the reason for putting it after the gorge rather than before.

Where $3,420 else goes

This departure sits on the $3,420 rung, and it is not alone there. The office keeps every trip at that figure on one page so the number can be seen doing different work in different parts of the world. It does not rank them and will not tell you which is the better buy, because that is not a judgement a figure supports.

• The whole of the $3,420 rung
• All eight figures side by side
• Every departure in one table