Journey to the South Part IV

The next morning I woke up fully rested, having had a very sound sleep in a quiet and comfortable room. We went out and checked out the butterflies flitting about the foliage in front of the cabin and took some photos. There were a lot of Chestnut Tigers.

Chestnut Tiger (Parantica sita niphonica)


After a hearty breakfast that included wild boar bacon, we drove to the Purple Butterfly Valley, an area famous for the massive numbers of Purple Crow butterflies (Euploea tulliolus koxinga) that flock there. I had never seen butterflies in such concentrations before. But the locals said they had seen days with far more.

Look at them all!


Video does it better justice in terms of showing the sheer numbers.


A closeup. Note that one of them has been marked by researchers studying the migration patterns of this species.


Next we drove to a nearby valley, and did a little hiking. See the building in the river valley at the left of the photo? There used to be a village there. It was washed away by Typhoon Morakot in August 2009. If you look closely further upstream, you can see a suspension bridge. We would soon walk across it.



Approaching the suspension bridge


At the bridge




At a quiet picnic area on the other side, Robert taught us a self-hypnosis technique that's useful for relieving stress and relaxing the mind.

Rested, we went back to the car and drove on.

For the gravers in my readership (you know who you are), we passed a small, interesting Aboriginal cemetery. Presumably of the Rukai tribe, mostly.



Notice all the crosses. The Aborigines were heavily Christianized by 19th century missionaries.


Then we drove to the Hakka city of Meinong for lunch. We discovered a fantastic restaurant and chowed down on Hakka food, such as bantiao (a dish of fried flat noodles), meigan kourou (a pork belly and sour cabbage dish), and yelian: a dish made from an aquatic plant called Crested Floating Heart (Nymphoides cristata). I didn't take any photos of the food because I had to recharge my camera batteries.

Interesting thing about the restaurant was that it is also a garden center, with lots of plants. They seemed to be especially fond of Bougainvillea.



Euphorbia lactea var. cristata. Believe it or not, it's closely related to the poinsettia.


The Hakka consider the written word sacred, and historically if they wanted to dispose of written material it had to be done properly, as a burnt offering to a god. This furnace was designed for that particular purpose.



Another historic site in Meinong: this old archway.


And closeby is a sacred tree. In front of it are tablets representing gods. Unlike other Chinese peoples, the Hakka don't carve graven idols of their gods: instead, they are represented by tablets and by natural objects like rocks and trees.



Our next destination for the day was farther to the west, an area the locals call Moon World. It's called that because of the vast expanses of mud hills that the rains and winds have shaped over thousands of years into an eerie lunar landscape.

Moon World


Located in a remote spot within Moon World are a number of mud volcanoes. We visited some. At the first area, we could hear the bloop! bloop! sound of bubbles of gas erupting from one of the volcanoes.



This is the most active on at this site, and is the source of the bloop! sounds. There are two other tall volcanoes that are extinct, but there are also two or three newly forming volcanoes there too.



Some video:


Here's a young volcano. The mud is cool. The gas bubbling out is methane. Robert is testing the depth: his stick is 3 feet long.



Not far from this site is the New Yangnyu Mad Pond (we believe it's supposed to be "mud", not "mad").



Here there are similar volcanoes, but more actively bubbling. A guy there likes to entertain visitors by lighting the gas on fire.



Video:


We left, and arrived at an area called Cockscomb Mountain where we could hike alongside the mud cliffs of Moon World. We saw that there are lots of fossils in the mud!



It was getting dark. After taking a pleasant walk around a new park by a reservoir, we began the long drive home. It was uneventful except for a traffic jam as we approached Taipei caused by potatoes on the road!

A long day with lots packed into it. A very interesting and eventful trip!

Journey to the South Part III

That night we went on a night safari. The son of the resort's owner, nicknamed "Bighead", showed us a variety of interesting flora and fauna, some of which are better seen at night. Below is jus a sampling of what he showed us.

The first thing we did was visit a frog pond. It became very active with the fall of night, and there were quite a few Latouche's frogs leaping about. Some were relaxing on rocks.

Latouche's frog (Rana latouchii)


Here's an indigenous tree called the Hayata Fig, named after Bunzo Hayata, a Japanese botanist who discovered many species in Taiwan back during the Japanese occupation. Its Chinese name is "rough-leafed fig". As you can see, there are galls on the leaves. They contain larvae of the insect Sympauropsylla triozoptera, and the two species have somewhat of a symbiotic relationship.

Hayata Fig (Ficus irisana)


The owners had set up a fence designed as a place for caterpillars to pupate. Here's the caterpillar of a Golden Birdwing butterfly. Notice the orange organs sticking out by its head: these are defensive, emitting a foul odor to repel predators. And despite the caterpillar's fearsome appearance, the spikes on its body are not poisonous. It's an ugly caterpillar, but it becomes one of the most beautiful swallowtail butterflies!

Golden Birdwing larva (Troides aeacus formosanus)


We were also shown a kind of sumac tree that is used by the Aborigines as a source of tinder, and the seeds can be used as a seasoning for food. The Chinese name is "salt skin tree", and in English it's the Nutgall Tree or Chinese Sumac.

Nutgall Tree (Rhus chinensis)


Closeup of the leaves


The we went to a waterfall area, and in the pool below the waterfall was a freshwater crab.

Candidiopotamon rathbunae


In the same pool were some freshwater shrimp.



And finally, the piece de resistance, Swinhoe's Frog, only found in Taiwan. They like to cling to rocks by waterfalls.

Swinhoe's Frog (Odorrana swinhoana)


Here's a picture I took years ago of the same species, to give you a better idea of what it looks like:


After that we settled in for a long winter's sleep in our cabin room. Very quiet and comfortable, with nice warm blankets. Earlier, the campers who had set up their tents and RVs on the campground had been entertaining themselves with loud karaoke, but they had the consideration to stop it come nighttime.

By the way, here's a view of the camping area:


Pretty nifty, huh?

Journey to the South Part II

So after a fitful night's sleep, we woke up for the next day of activity.

And it was a fitful night's sleep. In the middle of the night, I happened to wake up, and as I was trying to fall asleep, I started hearing what sounded like a mutant rooster crowing. I believe it was just a rooster, but there was something a little odd about its cry: I thought maybe it was some sort of wake-up alarm coming from someone else's room. I got up to find my earplugs (which I failed to find), and then decided I was going to go outside to find out where the sound was coming from. Just as I was about to go out, the sound finally stopped.

So I crawled back into bed, and that was when the water tanks started filling up. In the distance I heard a pump start up, and then one by one the hotel's water tanks filled with hot springs water. Noise, noise, noise. The kind of noise that you'd be oblivious to if you were asleep, but which keep you awake if you have the misfortune to wake up.

Here is the hotel we stayed at. A venerable, century-old hotel that has a cool old-time atmosphere. Just bring earplugs if you're easily disturbed by sounds at night!


We hit the road. From Guanziling, we drove down the Coffee Highway. Along this winding mountain road are numerous coffee plantations. The climate and geography are also perfect for growing poongans (Citrus reticulata var. poonensis), a kind of green mandarin orange.

Coffee plant


Poongan and coffee


We stopped by a nice little coffee plantation by the side of the road, where they had coffee beans drying in racks, and we enjoyed a cup of freshly brewed coffee that had been grown right there on their plantation.





Black drongo (Dicrurus macrocercus harterti)



We continued driving down the Coffee Highway. Every once in a while we would see wild poinsettias (Euphorbia pulcherrima) along the side of the road.



The red "petals" of the poinsettia aren't petals at all: they're modified leaves called bracts. Like all plants of the genus Euphorbia, the poinsettia has a special kind of flower called a cyathium. Here is a closeup of the cyathia:



At the end of the Coffee Highway we came across a Buddhist temple. Inside the great hall are three principal Buddha statues. Left to right, they are: Amitabha (the Buddha of the Pure Land), Sakyamuni (Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism), and Bhaisajyaguru (the Medicine Buddha).



There were a lot of interesting plants in the temple gardens. Here's an Agave:



The next thing we did was stop by a traditional Taiwanese village that's in the midst of being restored. Every resident here has the same surname: Zhu.





Afterwards, we continued our drive along some roads where we saw considerable damage from the typhoon of August 2009. Lots of roads were being repaired after he resulting landslides, and some roads, including the Southern Cross-Island Highway (Hwy 20, part of which we drove along), remain closed.

Here's a typhoon-damaged building


After more driving, we finally arrived at our destination for the evening: a wonderful lodging near the town of Maolin run by an Aboriginal family of the Rukai tribe. It's located in an area called the Purple Butterfly Valley (which is not too far from the Yellow Butterfly Valley).

Here, Kate takes a nap in front of the cabin.


The cabin rooms were spacious tatami rooms with space for five people. Since we were a group of four, there was extra room to stretch out. After settling in, we decided to take a look around.

We saw quite a few butterflies in the area around the cabin.

Here's a Purple Crow (Euploea tulliolus koxinga)


The purples are very hard to take photos of with open wings. Here's the best I could do:


Then we took a hike up a lonely mountain road to observe more of nature.

Golden orb-web spider (Nephila pilipes)


Psyche butterfly (Leptosia nina niobe)


Common Sailor (Neptis hylas lulculenta)


Morning glory (Ipomoea purpurea)


A village across the valley that miraculously survived a major landslide pointed right at it


Later we went on a night safari. I'll save the description for Part III.