Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Tai Po Kau hike sights (Photo-essay)

I'm not sure if many other people do this... but I don't usually decide on my hike route until one or two days before the hike -- with my choices often being dictated by the weather (cool, hot, wet, dry, humid, etc.) and visibility (i.e., great, good or less so).  Thus it was that on a day where it was predicted to be hot and not great in terms of visibility, I opted to head to the Tai Po Kau Special Area -- where there's 440 hectares of thick forest (so lots of tree cover and the promise of lots to look at up close rather than in terms of views) -- for a 7.5 kilometer circular trek with my hiking companion.

The spotting highlight of the day were the many lizards (particularly skinks) that we encountered over the course of our hike.  But as the following photo-essay will hopefully show, we did enjoy catching a number of other interesting sights that afternoon too... :b

A pretty butterfly spotted resting right on the path 
we were going along that, if one didn't look closely, 
could easily mistaken for an autumnal leaf!

Surely not deliberately confusing but potentially so
just the same?
With so many tree roots on the ground, one did have to 
keep one's eye firmly on the ground while making one's way 
through Tai Po Kau (or risk tripping over at least one of them!)

A spider web made out of impressively 
dense and shiny threads

Is this a Harvestman I see before me?  
(I.e., an arachnid that's actually not a spider! :O)

Alternatively, this black creature seems to be a spider alright 
-- albeit one that lives in a hole in the earth!

 So bright orange was this particular toadstool
that it looked like it'd glow in the dark!

And for those who're wondering, this is the macro-view
of the forest that we got for much of this particular hike :)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

nice snaps Yvonne. I was out there myself last week walking the blue trail with the kids. I was quite impressed with how utterly quiet it gets (kids notwithstanding) :-)

Phil

fredamans said...

Love the butterfly and spiderweb, but eeeeekkkkkkk to the spiders! :-)

YTSL said...

Hi orientalsweetlips (i.e. Phil :b) --

Thanks, I'm glad you like the pictures. As you can probably tell by the length I stated I went on, I went for the brown walk myself. A good workout on a hot day! Some day, I'll try the 10km yellow walk. :)

Hi fredamans --

Awww, spiders can be cute and lovely -- and I love how many of them will stay still for me to photograph, unlike most butterflies! ;b

Friend of HK said...

It is one of my favourite hiking places in HK!

YTSL said...

Hi Friend of HK --

I've only hiked in the Tai Po Kau area twice thus far but both times, the hikes have been satisfying ones for sure. :)