Monday, December 27, 2010

Shoushan 壽山 and Monkeys Galore at Monkey Mountain, #2

We enjoyed Monkey Mountain so much the first time, we decided to head back and hike another route. This time, we persevered and found the entrance near the Gu Shan High School. We parked the car in the large parking lot, shaded by a rock face. We took the wooden stairs by the vendors selling hiking gear, to the trail and began the ascent.

The northern parking entrance



We began our hike here
Just the same as the southern side of Mt Shoushan, the trails are very well marked in Chinese and English.



Before we knew it we were face to face with some friendly, and also not so friendly, mountain Macaques.

This little guy was chilling waiting for
some orange from a fellow hiker.


We were strangely fascinated to see some gym equipment occupying some shaded leaf littered areas of the trails.

Jeff couldn't resist




The board walks took us to numerous caves, view points and banyan trees. The vegetation changed from coarse and dry to soft and lush throughout the hike. We ended up walking the entire route that day. In part because we had lots of energy, and in part because we got a little lost. Regardless, the hike was enjoyable and entertaining.


A view of the eastern side of the Kaohsiung

And the view of the east 

During the last 15 minutes of the descent to the temple, a few minutes north of where we began our hike and parked the car, we stumbled across a troop of monkeys making their way up the stairway. The numerous amount of placid monkeys at the bottom can be attributed to the temple and large amount of visitors feeding them. Definitely the place to go if you want the monkeys without the hike.

Hanging out on a side trail 




Can you see the monkey in the background?


See how close you can get to the Macaques in this short video I took

 

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