Down in Tainan: maolin

Pictures from a long weekend spent in Maolin, south Taiwan.

Great weather and fantastic mountain views all around.

The group

Maolin is also home to the second largest butterfly migration in the world, thousands of purple butterflies fly from north Taiwan to the warmer south. From what we had heard and read in books, we were expecting to see thousands of butterflies, but our timing was off by a couple of weeks and so, if you walked around the valley and looked at one area, you would see as many as in my first picture. However, someone had kindly rounded up a few and put them in a 'viewing cage' so you can take a closer look.

At night, all the moths came out, including this one that looked like a bird.

Strolling through a quiet road at night, we thought we were by ourselves, but when I saw a leaf hanging in the middle of the road I wondered how that could be, it was then that we shone our torches above our heads and realised that there were hundreds of huge spider webs (and equally big spiders) going from one side of the road to the other. It was just luck that I hadn't run into one!

These photos are from a trip that I and some of the other teachers at school went on during a 5 day holiday. This was a holiday the government gave and instead of having a holiday from Mon-Fri so that then we could have Sat and Sun, we had Fri-Tues; because that makes more sense!

Anyway, our destination was Maolin and our mode of transport were our scooters. Getting there took around 6 hours and we really hadn't reacherd there yet, just a hotel to sleep at for the night. The road to there took us past ugly old concrete coloured towns and up and down tropical moutains.
The next day we finally reached Maolin Scenic area, but only after a very funny incident at the Maolin Tourism board (in which I broke up in laughter in front of the man's face after he was unable to tell me anything about the hotels in Maolin).

At Maolin, we arrived at Dona village and stayed at a really nice guest house which unfortunately also seemed to be allowing insects to stay, so it was accordingly nicknamed bug house. And that nickname was further strengthened when I was woken up in the middle of the night by a cockroach crawling up my leg.

Dona village is famous for being home to the Rukai aboriginals, and on the day we arrived all the local were dressed in their finest clothing as there was a wedding taking place. All the Rukai were really friendly and allowed us to take part in the festivities; shaking our hands and inviting us to dance.

Dona is also famous for its hot springs, and going by the description in the LP, it seemed like a welcomed respite from all the traveling. However, when we arrived there, we did not find a relaxing spring set amongst a tropical backdrop, but 5 or 6 concrete baths packed arm to arm, cheek to cheek with Taiwanese tourists. None of us really felt like squeezing in amongst them and then being stared and being pointed at for being a foreigner.

After a day of driving around fantastic mountain scenery and walking along suspensions bridges we made our way back home.

*A video will also be uploaded at a later day

Whilst finding our way there, we came across this huge temple