We set off to Taroko in the early morning. We had planned to take the 7.50am tourist bus. However cuz of sleepy me and Angela with her meticulous skincare procedure, we missed the bus;( As we were waiting for the next bus which comes at 8.30am, a taxi driver approached us. He offered to let us join in his cab with two other foreigners. After much coercion, we got pulled in to the idea of not needing to wait for infrequent shuttle bus and went along with him. The full day taxi ride only costed us $450NT each:)
Then we eventually realized we doubled up as translators for the driver. Mr driver would tell us where the main attractions are, the rendezvous point and meeting time and would ask us to translate for the foreign customers. Our foreign cabby friends were from America and Australia. Like epic introverts that we are, we only got to know their names and country of origin. One lady name Jackie and a guy named Jay. We didn't even got around asking them for a group picture! Our mission of the day was to sneak the group picture haha. Here's the product:
Our first location was the Taroko National Park entrance. Nothing much there but the driver gave us 30mins to roam so we just camwhored.
Next up was the visitor centre. They was alot of nice exhibits there but Mr driver only gave us 15-20mins to roam around so we had to skip some of them...
Here's a 3D model of Taroko Gorge
It's pretty cool how the dice-shape seats(?) even has exhibits in them
Finally, we started to trek at our third location- Shakadang Trail. It was a tough walk, especially in high platform! Almost tripped a couple of times.
A picture of Shakadang~
We went to yanzikou next. We had to wear helmets in case of falling rocks. 
Had to walk through dark tunnels as well.
Our foreigner friends walked already fast! They looked like they were leisurely strolling though. However our short asian strides couldn't match theirs.
We reached the toilet resting area and thought that was our rendezvous point with mr driver.20mins and 10+ phone calls later, we realised we haven't really finish the whole trail ._.Our -.- faces as we missed call Mr driver
Next up is Lushui, a even rockier trail. There was a part I almost slipped. Thank goodness there was a bar to grab on to! It's really pretty here though
After trekking for a long time, i finally tripped over at one of the trails. Angela was laughing at my misfortune;/ But it was a misfortune waiting to come seeing as I was trekking in platform shoes!! Our poor shoes got muddy as well after the trek. Moral of story: bring sport shoes when you go overseas!!
Next we went to Tianxiang temple I think. There were 200++ steps! We gave up after we went for toilet break and see guanyin haha. As Angela described, i look like an ant in comparison!!
Finally, we reached qixingtan. The beach was real windy and awesome! 
Look at how blue the ocean is~
We played with the slightly warm water and got my socks all wet. Our foreigner friend even wanted to go for a swim! Said he would "dry off with the wind" Hahaha
We had a mini locking session at qixing tan. We didn't realize that the taxi driver and our foreign friends were all waiting for us until mr driver called Angela.
After our tour ended, we bid our cabby friend farewell and took a long journey back to Taipei. Loooonnnng and motion-sickness inducing ride. There was one grumpy mrt guy who didn't serve us well. He gave us the :/ face as we "huh" to his speedy mumbles of chim Chinese words. We are foreigners and don't know the working of Taiwan railway system ok! >:( He didn't even get the railway train with seats for us! We had to re-queue just to ask for another upgrade with seats... We were praying that we don't get him serving us when we queued the second time round haha
Sad that our mini-vacation's over,
Jojo
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