Vestiges of Kura-Kura: Maolin National Scenic Area (茂林國家風景區)

Maolin (茂林)

If you have your own transportation, about two hours west of Tainan (台南) is Maolin (茂林) District, part of Kaosiung City (though why this distant rural area is part of the Kaoshiung "city" and not "county" makes no sense to me). Between November and March (February being the peak), the Taiwanese Purple Crow Butterfly's winter migration crosses through the Maolin Valley giving visitors the chance to view hundreds of thousands of these butterflies in one of only two winter butterfly migrations in the world (the other in Mexico). (For more information check out their website.) The best time of day to see butterflies is in the morning, after the sun has come up enough to dry the dew off their wings so they can fly. The gentle Zishalishali Trail ( 姿沙里沙里步道) is the main trail to see butterflies and is not far off from the main road's entrance into town (and being the town's main attraction, you won't have trouble finding signs leading to it).

The trail is well constructed (begging for tourists), and we saw about a dozen butterflies on it, BUT after climbing up and reaching the sign pictured below, if you turn left instead of right you'll end up walking down a wide dirt road and it was there that we saw THOUSANDS of butterflies. A man driving a large truck nearly charged and ran us over as stood there in awe. He informed us we should have come in February to see even more (we were there March 2nd). From the sign post pictured below you can also go left and up another trail, which leads to the uneventful Maya Pavilion but there is a nice view of the valley from there, see the picture below.) We took the "foot path for admiring butterflies" for a nice walk that leads back into town.

Zishalishali Trail ( 姿沙里沙里步道)

Spiders also seem to enjoy the Purple Crown Butterflies

We actually saved this butterfly from a spider web and here it rested trying to clean the cobwebs of its wings

View from Zishalishali Trail of the road leading into Maolin

The road in the picture above is fairly new. It replaces the one that ran along the mountain and was (likely) destroyed by Typhoon Morakot (you can still see parts of it that weren't washed away by landslides). Having traveled more now through central Taiwan I see that they've learned to build raised roads through the valleys rather than along the mountains. Most of the time the country looks so peaceful, but in rural areas there are remnants of previous disasters (typhoons, floods, earthquakes, and landslides) all over as a reminder that any day can turn to a bad day here.

After seeing the butterflies we drove further into the valley to see Maolin National Scenic Area's famous meander cores (hills formed by curving stream waters... I had to look that up during the trip), waterfalls, and gorges. Since Taiwan is experiencing one of its worst droughts this year, we only went to one of the waterfalls and I won't even bother posting a photo of its dripping.