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!
