Asia Mega Tour II - Pictures From Taroko National Park And Eastern Coast

As I mentioned I took a butt ton of pictures. Wife's post does a much better job of describing exactly where we were. However, whereas she said she would not bore you with a all her pictures, I on the other hand have absolutely NO QUALM what so ever about boring you with all my pictures!!!!

Actually what I'd like to do is give you more of the feel of where we were.

Ocean

The east coast of Taiwan drops precipitously into the Pacific Ocean. There are plateaus that jut out under the water after which there are steep drops. You can see this in the color of the water. The ocean is so dangerous on the east coast that swimming, diving, surfing have all been banned. The water also has the most amazing blue/blue-green color.

The effect of earthquakes and typhoons

This part of Taiwan gets more earthquakes than any other. It is right at the boundary were the Philippine and Eurasian plates are hitting. They also get hit by lots of powerful Pacific Typhoons. As a result road, bridges and tunnels are constantly having to be repaired and rebuilt.

Beautiful tunnel entrance

Made to replace one recently destroyed by landslide from Typhoon

New bridge that replaces bridge destroyed by earthquake

Indiana Wife and The Mountain Temple

Our intrepid photographer faces the death defying bridge

To make her way to the golden Bodhisattvas

And is finally rewarded

More temples and shrines in the gorge

This valley was once a much more gentle one but the extremely rapid up thrust of the mountain building has caused the river to carve almost straight down.

Trying to give you a sense of the depth of this place and its unique geology

And no post is complete without

SIGNS OF THE WORLD

In Asia one of the big problems in tourist sites is the hordes of East Asian tourists who insist on posing endlessly in front of the prime photo op sites either for their friends to take pictures of them doing stupid poses or they doing selfies of themselves. Thank goodness Taiwan has taken a stand against posing pollution as one can see from this NO POSING sign.