You can take the tourist shuttle bus to Taroko Gorge. Check the timings here http://www.taroko.gov.tw/English/?mm=5&sm=3&page=4. Or again, you can sit cab.
We took a cab. There was a guy called 郭仁惠 who stopped us when we stepped out of the Hua Lien station ( There is a difference between the 前站 後站). He showed us the map of the Taroko Gorge and convinced us that it would be better to take his transport. Each person 700 TWD. We got convinced. The bus would bring us there and there are several stops.. Each 'scenic spot' was about a few km apart from each other. I was abit tian zhen and originally thought it was possible to cover most of the area by foot but he explained that we had to walk a lot. Or after exploring, we could wait at the same stop for another bus for another hour which will then pick us to the next one. In retrospect, i still think it was a right choice albeit a slightly more exp one.
It was an old uncle. I estimated over 50. He was chatty and was like a
tour guide. He fetched us to several places.. Swallow Grotto, Lu Shui,
Cimu Bridge, Tian Xiang etc. Along the way, he explained to us the
significance of the place, why the bridge was built and even more kua
zhang, he showed us where was the perfect spot to take pictures. Like
those type of post-card perfect type. LOL. Seriously funny lor. I think
we were lucky. hahaha. He even shared with us stories about the tribe
there.. 太魯閣族, 阿美族. There was originally 9 tribes which then slowly
increased to 14.. He even showed us a picture of a tribesman holding
someone's head. wow. He recommended us to eat 竹筒飯. not
bad. I like the normal one instead of the purple one. We also had the
wild pork- hard and chewy.. wasnt tender. I asked about mochi earlier
on, so he brought us to somewhere to get mochi made by the yuan zhu min.
( much more ex compared to the prices in taipei- but i believe in
quality). We got to try on their clothes too. haha. The three of us.. bought 11 kg worth of stuff. Amazing.[ Its
the same weight as my luggage i brought.] This scary weight.. was
something we regretted a lot afterwards. 
郭仁惠recommended us to go to the ' triangle ' of hua lien city formed by 中正中山中華. It was the ' hip' place to go. We did shopping there and ate 周家蒸餃子's xiao long bao. Taiwan's xiao long bao is the size of our xiao rou bao! You should ask for zheng jiao zi if you want our normal xiao long bao. haha. tastes nice and it was very filling. Stella, Taroko 18's female owner recommended us to try the tou hua.. hmm, i had higher expectations of the tou hua.. maybe because i tried our lao ban before.. It started to rain and we walked back. And we discovered how bad our sense of direction was. We had a map and we followed it. Since there were several Family mart, we used them as our 'marking'. And somehow when we thought we were at the middle of the map, the shopkeeper told us we were at the bottom. So rmb to just ask if you feel that you are headed in the wrong direction. The Taiwanese are friendly. hahaha. We wore poncho.. walked under a dark and deserted expressway which had flickering lights.. sang songs along the way to chuang dan. Very memorable day. LOL.