we had planned today as a hiking day, so started our hike with the "swallow grotto trail" (aka. "yanzihkou trail"), that should give a nice view over some parts of the gorge. starting from our hotel we had to take some steep and long stairway[007], walk along the street[008-014] where also the bus would go, and finally arrived at the "swallow grotto"[015-045]. usually the water here should have been crystal blue and cyan, but guess who's to blame once more. yop, typhoon. so thanks to "haikui" (that's the name of the typhoon) the water was all gray and dirty. too bad, as we had only seen it with clear water so far. on pictures at the tourist information centers and in information brochures. but at least the streets were opened and not closed as the "changchun trail" was, which would have led us from the "eternal shrine"[046-101] via the "kuanyin caves", "taroko tower", the bell tower, and a hanging bridge, to "changuang temple". but closed. grrr... while taking a break at the nearby parking lot we had some snacks called "meat zongzi"[103,105] (with a chestnut inside) and "bamboo tube meal"[103] - nomnom! we found out there's another way to the "changuang temple" and the bell tower. so we went along a road[106-111,122,139-148] that was not the main road, and we soon ended up being all alone. the road was next to a riverbed[112-121], and we found a way to get down there. after exploring nice rock formations[117-119,121] we got back on the road to reach the "changuang temple"[126-138]. but the hanging bridge[125] to the bell tower[131] was closed too. oh well, at least we got to see a nice temple with a little balcony[128,132-134] where one got an awesome overview over the gorge, and besides a praying police man we were the only ones there. tranquil, quiet and contemplative - wonderful. enjoying the atmosphere we almost forgot about the bus. so we had to hurry back[139-152] to the bus station, as the last outbound bus goes at 15:30. fortunately the bus station was not far away. in the meantime it had also started to rain, so we were lucky we had to go through a tunnel[146-148] to reach the station. while waiting for the bus, we enjoyed all the different lions[153-155,157-158,161] at the shakadang bridge. for the rest of the day it was raining, and it seems a new typhoon (named "kai-tak") is approaching taiwan, hitting land tomorrow. i hope this does not affect our flight back home... in taiwan, garbage trucks have a distinctive tune they play when they come to collect all the garbage. we have heard the sound so many times and also seen people waiting in the street to hand over their garbage. why i mention this right now? well... even here, far away from the next town and civilization we heard the truck at the hotel. it's a wonderful tune to whistle along too, which we also did. i considered to get the tune for my telephone as my new ring tone. dinner buffet at the hotel this evening was awesome (i think you might already get bored of that, right?). track: day 18