adventures in china

It’s easy to think of Hong Kong as just a giant city, but in fact nearly 70% of the land is undeveloped.

Saturday, Isabella took me to the highest point on Hong Kong Island, The Peak. It’s a huge tourist attraction, but still a nice walk along a concrete path around the top of a mountain. Dotting the steep forested slopes are giant mansions and exorbitant apartment complexes for the wealthy who work below in the city.

Sunday, Uncle Joe took us to Shing Mun Country Park. Little Isabella went there with him 18 years ago and had her lunch stolen by the monkeys. When Uncle Joe went to rescue her, his backpack was taken. Many monkeys were seen on our 4 hour hike around the reservoir. We guarded our belongings.

Today we’re off to travel China. Places to visit/spend time in may include Shenzhen, Guilin, Yangshou, Guipin, Longsheng, Chengdu, and Leshan.

Ewww, look what’s on that leaf, it’s a big bird poo…

Or is it a? Spider!

Well, it’s almost the world’s largest moth, according to some #2, but that’s debatable. This is an atlas moth We caught it laying eggs on one of Jocelyn’s tadpole basins this morning. And I thought the lunar moths of Wisconsin were big…

What a special place. It took nearly 3 hours to finally find the overgrown entrance to this nature reserve. After pulling my way through vines and pushing through underbrush on what might or might not be a trail, I discovered a massive set of stairs up a mountain, like a scene from an Indiana Jones movie. At the top were a series of trails up to limestone outcroppings. After two hours of hiking, I discovered an abandoned research facility, complete with decaying bungalows for staying overnight, laboratories that were in shambles, and houses with broken windows and torn posters still on the wall. It was very eerie.

Snakes! We saw this banded krait last week during a survey, well Brenna and I did. This is the most dangerous snake in the region, one which has potent venom and is common in the area. Fortunately, they are not particularly aggressive.

This one is a baby keelback. They’re common snakes around the gardens because they enjoy eating frogs. While they have “medically-significant” venom, they are rear-fanged so it’s difficult to get into trouble with these ones. This baby I photographed yesterday was barely 6 inches long!