Another day of hiking! A beautiful day after weeks of rain and cold.
After dropping Kitty off at the airport for her trip to Malaysia, I drove to Xindian to meet Robert and Kate. It's Sunday so Peter, who works Sundays, couldn't come along.
From Xindian we drove to Sanxia, and then into the mountains to the south of the city. Deep into the mountains we came to Full Moon Park.
Full Moon Park is known for its waterfalls and an abundance of hiking trails. And other things...
The park is named after Full Moon Hill, which has a round top, kind of like a full moon:
We spent quite a bit of time going to various waterfalls. Kate had never been there, though Robert and I had been a couple of times before.
Here's Kate, with a bottle of sports drink in her hand, getting ready for the hike!
And here's Robert, sniffing a camphor tree! Camphor trees, native to Taiwan, were a major natural resource in Taiwan during the 19th century and the subsequent Japanese occupation.
Much of the trail looks like this. A nice hike along a well-maintained natural trail through the woods. A lot of uphill climbing.
At the top the trail splits, and you can follow a trail another hour or so to see the Big Trees - giant cedars between 1500 and 2000 years old. We didn't have time to go there this time, unfortunately.
Here's a signpost on the trail:
My camera unfortunately doesn't handle low-light conditions very well, requiring long exposures or a flash, so I didn't get many satisfactory shots of the hike on the trail. Anyway, it was getting late and we had to head back down. In all, we hiked about 4 hours. Kate at one point slipped and twisted her ankle. Not badly, but enough so that it hurt and she was limping. Fortunately we weren't too far from the bottom. At one point we heard a barking deer (also known as Reeves' muntjac - Muntiacus reevesi) out somewhere in the woods!
I like the illogic of Guideline 11 below (click on the image for a clearer view).
It's illogical in English, because you take memories with you; you don't leave them in the park. It's logical in Chinese, however, because the use of the verb 留 (liu) implies "leaving" memories in your mind. The translator should also not have put the word "away" in, because it detracts from the double meaning of "take". The translator should have written "Take nothing but photographs; leave nothing but footprints", thus sacrificing fidelity in favor of transparency.
On the drive back, we stopped at an interesting little roadside restaurant with a name translating roughly as Natural Pace, and had a satisfying meal and good conversation. Robert is learning Chinese, and he's at the intermediate level, but Kate started discussing, in Chinese, German expressionist film during the Weimar Republic period, which was a little advanced for Robert (and a not exactly easy for me either)! But we had a great time!
Then I dropped Kate and Robert off at their respective residences before heading home.
