Taroko National Park is Taiwan’s number one tourist destination and deservedly so as it is home to Taroko Gorge – a stunning, dizzying and mesmerizing piece of natural phenomena. If you only have time for one stop outside of the Taipei then be sure that it’s here.

The highlight of the park is the deep gorge forged between almost vertical cliffs by millennia of earthquakes and natural erosion. As we drove into the gorge even our wriggly three-year-old was awed by the sheer monumental size and magnificence of this world-famous gorge. Beauty is literally around every turn and with hikes and viewpoints everywhere, there’s plenty to keep the kids interested. 

The park services are exceptional with a variety of campsites, service areas, well-signposted trails and so on to suit every type of visitor. A windy road and dozens of well-maintained trails mean that you can drive, scoot, cycle or hike through the park. You can even river trace! Taroko National Park is a gateway to a thousand adventures.

Entering Taroko National Park

Taroko National Park is easy to reach both by private and public transport. Highways lead into the park from Northern, Eastern and Western Taiwan. Trains stop at nearby Xincheng with local buses linking to the park and the nearby city of Hualien has a convenient airport.

We visited as part of a Taiwan road trip with kids that took us through the breath-taking Taroko Gorge, from Hualien towards Sun Moon Lake.

The map below shows our route through Taroko National Park to Renai Township. It was a LONG day but we had plenty of breaks, including several short child-friendly hikes.

The Visitors Centre

We had scheduled just one day to drive through the gorge and out the west side. After stopping at the informative Taroko National Park Visitor Centre to pick up maps and get suggested kid-friendly hikes, we set off through the eerily beautiful scenery.

The friendly staff at the Visitor’s Centre even gave the children a free pack of postcards/ activity booklet to take with them. Also in the Visitor’s Centre, there were various amenities including a cafe, toilets and many exhibitions on the park and its indigenous inhabitants.

Changchun Shrine

Our first stop was at the awe-inspiring Changchun Shrine, but if your kids are a bit older then it’s probably worth a short hike along the Shakadang Trail first too. See our handy infographic for more details. 

The Changchun shrine is absolutely gorgeous. It is said that pictures speak a thousand words, so I’ll let my photo below do most of the talking. Even H and Z were impressed with the beauty and they’ve seen a lot of temples and shrines already in their short lives!

From the park entrance, it only takes a few minutes to drive the Changchun Shrine. The view you can see is from the car park, which was the limit of our experience there. Whilst you can walk up to the shrine, we wanted to save H and Zizi’s energy for some hikes later in the day.

Buluowan

There are lots of great trails leading away from Buluowan (see infographic). Buluowan is also home to a well-equipped service centre with a cafe and amenities. We stopped for some tasty dumplings and other snacks here.

There is a small museum at Buluowan with displays depicting traditional indigenous life of the Taroko tribe in the region. There is a short film in Mandarin explaining the local indigenous culture throughout the day. Before the Japanese colonized Taiwan in the late 19th century, many indigenous tribes lived within the current park’s boundaries. 

In indigenous Taroko culture, a women’s social status was defined by her weaving skills. Weaving was such a prestigious craft that men weren’t even allowed to touch a woman’s weaving tools. 

What impressed us most was the efforts to keep the buildings synchronized with the natural surroundings. The buildings were all constructed from wood and beautifully carved with indigenous motifs. The Visitor Centre at the park entrance also used a similar style of natural-local influenced architecture. It was really pleasant just sitting at the café’s observation deck enjoying the beautiful scenery all around us. The coffee wasn’t good though.

Swallow Grotto Trail

I planned our first hike for Swallow Grotto Trail. The trail follows the road as it winds alongside the gorge, with the road seemingly carved out of the rocks. It feels like you’re driving through caves as you pass alongside the trail to the parking spots on the bridge. Having the parking at the end of the trail is a bit odd as we’d already seen the entire trail. We actually decided not to do the walk for this reason, as well as seeing that the trail was crowded.

Family-Family Tip: You are advised to wear a hard hat on the Swallow Grotto Trail to prevent injury from falling rocks. You can pick them up and return at any of the service areas and a tent on the main road. It’s one size fits all. We took ours off for the photo!

Swallow Grotto is breathtaking. The blend of the mountain into the road is very impressive but it’s the views from the bridge that impress most. We felt very small in Swallow Grotto compared to the steep cliffs – not for the first or last time during our day in Taroko Gorge.

Xiangde Temple

Our next stop was at Tianxiang so that we could see Xiangde Temple. A quick ice cream purchased from the 7-11 convenience stall (aside: 7-11’s are everywhere in Taiwan! Apparently it has the highest density of them anywhere in the world) gave H and Zizi the energy to run over the bridges that approach Xiangde Temple.

Like many spots in Taroko Gorge, there is almost too much incredible scenery to take in. The addition of temples and aesthetically architected bridges add to the beauty. There is simply so much to look at and the camera doesn’t do the panoramas justice.

Baiyang Trail

At last, our main chance to stretch our legs and go for a proper walk. We’d been saving the exertion to the end of Taroko Gorge as we didn’t want H and Z to tire too early in the day. We still had a long drive westwards after Taroko Gorge so I hoped the kids would sleep after a hike.

Baiyang Trail offers variety, a flat path and obviously incredible views. It starts through a long, dark tunnel so bring a flashlight or use the lights on your phones, which is what we did. The trail continues alongside a valley and through a few more shorter tunnels to Baiyang Waterfall. I felt tiny in against the almost vertical sides of the valley, which made the experience of being out in nature even more rewarding.

Tips and safety in Taroko Gorge

Visit the Taroko National Park Visitors Centre

The Visitor Centre has really good information and the handouts summarise the trails extremely well. As well as having the duration and difficulty of each trail listed, the leaflet they provide (in English) has safety advice for each trail. For example, hard helmets are recommended for Swallow Grotto, due to falling rocks. As mentioned before, these can be picked up from the tent on the side of the road prior to Swallow Grotto.

Read the signs

There are also signposts at the start of each trail and I recommend that you read them. By knowing what lay ahead, we were on the lookout for snakes at Baiyang Trail as the sign warned us that there we venomous ones around. Indeed, Rhino subsequently spotted a snake crossing our path around 15 metres in front of us, which gave us enough warning to stop at a safe distance.

Plan rest breaks 

There aren’t that many places to eat full meals within Taroko Gorge. We made sure we had a big breakfast in Hualien and followed that up with our dumplings snack for brunch at Buluowan. This worked as the kids didn’t request much food during the day and Zizi is normally a non-stop eating machine! I topped up these meals with extra bribe snacks throughout the day when we wanted them to do some walking.

Driving from Taroko Gorge to Sun Moon Lake

We drove us west from Hualien through Taroko Gorge and out the other side towards Sun Moon Lake. We planned a night’s stopover in Renai in case the journey was too long. This proved to be a wise move.

The roads through Taroko Gorge are very windy like you are driving along the back of a wiggly serpent. It requires non-stop attention and Rhino was pretty whacked at the end of the day. Fortunately, there are mirrors at most of the bends so you can spot oncoming traffic – this reduces the risk of crashes, but Rhino had to be constantly focussed as the roads are very narrow with sheer drops down the gorge to the side.

It was a wonderful drive with sumptuous scenery. H and Z coped well with the drive and their siesta after Baiyang Trail helped. I wouldn’t do the drive if my kids were prone to car sickness, however, as it’s basically one curve after another for hours.

There is a huge climb up to 3,000 metres as you drive westwards out of the park. This gives a really special experience of driving above the clouds in some areas. Luckily, neither Rhino or I get vertigo!

With us driving so high, there was a continuous risk of the clouds settling in across the gorge and, sure enough, this happened. Visibility reduced for us to around 15m and Rhino had to drive extremely slowly and carefully on the windy lanes. This made for slow going and I was glad we had planned not to drive all of the way to Sun Moon Lake in one day.

A night in Renai Township

The countryside around Renai is beautiful and I was glad we decided to spend some time there. I had booked a night in Iris Farmhouse which proved an excellent choice. Although the hosts couldn’t speak much English, they were lovely and very welcoming.

They prepared a huge hotpot meal for us, which was just what we needed after a long day. Awesome to get all the nutrients from the vegetables after a few too many car snacks! If you are looking for somewhere to stay in Renai then I would definitely recommend Iris Farmhouse. The showers are hot and pressurized – again what you need after a long drive.

Onwards to Sun Moon Lake

After a hearty and home cooked breakfast, we set-off for Sun Moon Lake. Driving directly this takes around 90 minutes, but we decided to go a more scenic route passing Wan-ta reservoir and a sequence of rural villages.

It was fascinating to drive through the countryside and see the rural life. We chanced upon one fascinating village covered in murals celebrating the contributions women made to life. This was a special highlight for me, I love discovering how cultures respect and pay homage to women. The murals were beautiful too, and it must be inspiring to girls growing up there.

Our last stop before Sun Moon Lake was at Wenwu Temple, situated at the North side of the lake. It gave a fantastic start to our Sun Moon Lake experience, with the viewpoint there offering wide vistas of the deep blue lake. The temple itself seems fairly new but is interesting for the construction at the back of the temple which is quite unique. Despite being overly touristy, Wenwu Temple is definitely worth visiting whilst at Sun Moon Lake as the position and views make it memorable.

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