Taiwan Expedition Log

August 9-29, 2008
September 5, 2008 update

click thumbnails to open large images in a new window

Wednesday August 20, 2008

While we had high hopes, the road suddenly turned into a hiking trail at 1,500' ... far lower than our preferred altitude for good winter hardiness. Without a good alternative, we hit the trail for the long hike up. After negotiating the swinging bridge where we walked past Colocasia esculenta with exposed stolons clinging to a vertical waterfall, we began to climb and to our surprise saw several plants with potential hardiness. As we reached 1,700', we started seeing huge patches of aspidistra with 3.5' leaves ranging from solid green to heavily spotted, on the hills above us, surrounded by Chloranthus oldhammii and topped by the second schefflera species of our trip, the lowland S. arboricola. The understory was also quite abundant with the spreading Ophiopogon reversus, while flowering hoyas dripped from the trees. We now felt like a real part of the hoya-polloi.

As we hit 2,000', Begonia chitoensis began appearing again, and as we approached 2,300', we were greeted with a sheer hillside of the gesneriad, Titanotrichum oldhammii, Tricyrtis formosana, Torenia sp., epiphytic orchids, an unidentified adiantum fern, and a unique cyrtomium were all firsts for our trip. There were other cool plants, including huge patches of ground orchids, many of which could not be identified including an indigofera ... like Campylotropis giraldii. A cool clematis with silver-veined leaves was growing alongside the large rocks, which were covered either in the popular houseplant Ficus pumila or dwarf lemmaphyllum fern. Interesting trees in the area included Lagerstroemia subcostata (crape myrtle), and Celtis sinensis (Chinese hackberry). Some of the trees were so weighted down my massive epiphytic clumps of Aglaomorpha meyeniana fern. I don't know how the branches kept from crashing to the ground, especially as the overweight macaque who watched us from a safe distance kept leaping from limb to limb. The most discomforting moment was the trail-side sign warning us not to disturb the bear ... fortunately, we must have been there during nap time ... and we thought the earlier sign warning us not to continue unless properly supplied was bad. After hiking three hours up, it was time to return in order to reach our hotel before dusk. Thankfully, once we got back on Highway 30 and crossed over Highway 9, our hotel was not far away.

The hotel was nice and quiet until we reached our room, only to have a bus load of middle-age shrieking Chinese women arrive ... at least it wasn't as bad as the cicadas. The hotel was fine, but obviously geared toward both young kids and older folks who wanted to be young again. The main attraction here was no doubt the countless pools of sulfur-smelling water being touted as the fountain of youth. There was no Internet in the room and getting the computer in the lobby to stop typing in Chinese took quite a while since the staff spoke only a few words of English. My first task was to check the Typhoon warning status, which had us constantly concerned since were visiting during peak typhoon season. Sure enough a quick-forming Typhoon was battering the Philippines and projected to skirt Southern Taiwan about the same time we were going across some of the worse cross-country roads ... not good news.

After getting a backlog of email and waiting for the bus group to finish eating, we headed into the second floor restaurant. There were only a few choices for dinner, and thanks to a visiting Japanese customer who helped us translate the menu, we wound up with a delicious meal including my first opportunity to try the surprisingly good daylily bud soup. After dinner chores including doing more laundry, after which we faced the perpetual problem of getting clothes dry. Because of the high humidity in Taiwan, it took days to air dry clothes. We finally settled on using the hotel hair dryer, which thanks to a bit of duct tape, worked amazingly well ... except for those which weren't UL approved ... hence a few pairs of pants with souvenir burn marks.

Thursday August 21, 2008

After lunch, we headed back north on Highway 9 to check out the eastern end of the South Cross Island Highway (Hwy 20) that we would be traveling the next day. We were able to make it up to 5,600', before running out of daylight and heading back to An Tung. We just had time to start getting into the interesting plants as we saw more Tricyrtis ravenii and some wonderful cyclobalanopsis (evergreen oaks), but the most exciting find was a brown-flowered fragrant clematis Mark spotted growing along the roadside. If anyone knows what species this might be, please let me know.

Back home, Michelle had shipped me a new laptop to replace the one stolen earlier in the trip. FedEx Taiwan called on our way back to the hotel, explaining I would owe a $200 import tax. After several minutes of heated discussion about why I would have to pay an import tax to replace a stolen item, my cell phone call was dropped before I had time to call her an incompetent idiot. One thing about most Taiwanese bureaucrats is they are great at following rules with little or no to ability to think about why the rules actual exist.