2014 day 2 拉拉山

拉拉山民宿．嶺鎮景觀度假農場

This was the place that we stayed for 2 nights. We had a lovely room overlooking the mountainside. The inn keeper is a 70+ year old spunky lady with a very loud and distinctive voice. Her son helps her run the place and she also has a young lady helper. Her command of English is limited to Hello! She agreed to let me book the place without paying a deposit. It was really very good of her. Her son is also a fairly good cook and we were given breakfast and dinner. Taiwanese breakfast is very monotonous: cabbage, pork floss, bamboo slices, bean curd, fried eggs and congee. Dinner was fried fish, cabbage, chicken, bean curd and soup （金针花 Orange day lily (Hemerocallis fulva) with mushrooms). Yummy! Here in the mountains are also where they grow peaches, 水蜜桃 during summer time.

Be warned that in many B&Bs in Taiwan, there is no indoor heating. Only the bed is heated. Water is heated by gas so when there was power failure on the second night, we could still have hot showers. And we do need the hot shower, temperature was 8 degrees Celsius. According to the inn keeper's son, there was snow the week before; even at the peak of summer, temperature never rose above 20 degree Celsius. 

拉拉山自然保护区

 I picked this place because this is a protected area where one can see thousand year old red cypress 紅檜 (Chamaecyparis formosensis). Beautiful old trees and there were also tonnes of bryophytes along the walls and paths. There were more byrophytes encountered during the whole trip than there were ferns. It is really a paradise for mosses and liverworts (lichens as well).