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- Apr 26, 2008
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The Hunt for Huaping Nature Reserve and a Quick Visit to Longji
Last Saturday and Sunday my wife and I, together with Scott and his wife and two children had a bit of an excursion, although I was the only one with an agenda.
Huaping
Most of the trip consisted of driving through some of the most beautiful scenery on Earth in search of Huaping, a nature reserve far in the Guilinese countryside. In this respect we were successful, though we didn't get into the actual protected forest area of the reserve before nightfall, so we settled for a short stop in a mountain valley.
Scott's daughter was stationed as lookout on his vehicle.
Scott points at.. er... something..
I began what would be a mostly unsuccessful hunt.
I found many tube under rocks and also large funnel webs leading under rocks. Of all of these I only saw the creator once. I can say with fair certainty that it was not a mygalomorphid. It was bright yellow and slightly green and darted into a deep hole under more underground rocks.
There in lay the problem... All of the webs were like this and there was no way to digg them out. Next time I will try flushing them out with water, but I think that this wouldn't have worked either because the water would just pour through. Any suggestions?
Again my wife has an obsession about taking interesting photos of obscure things she sees..
Finally something cool that I've never seen before! A land crab?
Although we never entered the heart of the reserve, where there are supposedly musk deer, wild swines, wolves, and possibly clouded leopards and less likely South Chinese tigers (Ja, that's why I wanted to go there so bad!), we did bear witness to incredible scenery - winding roads through a tall range of mountains with deep valleys, mixed bamboe/pine forests, a myriad of waterfalls, and remote minority villages. Night was fast approaching and we needed to arrive at our next destination while we could still find it in the dwindling light...
Longji
We enter a Zhuang minority hilltown that has started to become touristy over the last several years.. My wife can understand their dialect of their minority language, but speaks her own version of Zhuang.
Views from our hotel window.. It took over five hundred years for them to build the rice terraces.
I also discovered that virtually every tourist there was Dutch and they even had Heineken, our flag, klompen (wooden shoes), and postcards on the wall. I felt right at home. ;P
One young couple scared Scott when he said Dutch people probably came to the hotel because it was cheap, in reference to the flag. Humourously the same thing happened to a French friend of mine in Guilin that said that Dutch wasn't a beautiful language. The Netherlandic disagree - and we are everywhere...
A local minority woman meets her daily exercise quota..
That night I took an electric torch and ventured into the mountains behind the village to hunt, but found absolutely nothing except small frogs and large roaming beetles. At least there weren't any mosquitoes! When I returned - which took a while because I got lost after my torch ran out of battery - there were huge moths everywhere (Including a beautiful Luna moth) and Scott was horrified by a large huntsman spider, as many are. I regret not having taken any photos.
The next day we were off on our way back to Guilin, but that still gave us enough time to explore a Yao village and the surrounding area.
As soon as we got out of the car we were greeted by this bad boy (a species of Argiope) at the entrance to a suspension bridge to cross the river.
As we began to hike the trail on the other side of the bridge we noticed that evidence of the vast irrigation works of the area was everywhere - often subtle...
...and sometimes spectacular.
When we walked through some rice fields a huge black snake slithered between Scott, infront of me, and myself. It may have been a water snake, as it slid into the water and disappeared under the bank of the river.
As the forest thickened and we started climbing up the mountains a bit we came across more and more waterfalls.
These are only some of the impressive waterfalls we saw throughout the trip. We must have seen hundreds, but I only had time to take several clean shots of these magnificent displays of raw beauty. If I was dying of thirst I would definitely drink that water, but I only washed my face this time. :}
Again I found many webs under the rocks, but I was unable to dig any out. Does anyone have experience in hunting these kind of spiders? It wasn't a total loss, though...
...Because on the way back this cool little spider lowered down infront of me, from the dense vegetation above.
Before having our lunch we washed up in the river..
I am f*ing invincible, it seems, as our wives (whom are locals) and Scott (Who spent a lot of time in Latin America) complained about how spicy the dishes were, but I (having eaten virtually nothing spicy my whole life and avoiding it like the plague) somehow had no feeling. I think it had something to do with that incident...
After seeing this incredible canyon...
- and four-wheeling in it -
we decided to refresh ourselves..
I also found this tiny frog (About 1.5cm from snout to base of tail) and a species of (what I think to be) Diplurid, which I unfortunately wasn't able to catch as it darted far underground.
After that we headed back home and I am dying to get back out there next time. I felt a depressing wave as the city pollution entered my nostrils and really wish I could live there.
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