Monkeys!

Monkeys!

I’d been waiting all my life! And here I was on an island with native monkeys. I was so excited. We had been planning this hike for months with some Taiwanese friends who were from the area. We had missed a previous date because I had come down with some nasty illness. But now, we were ready.

The monkey mountain lay just outside of the southern city of Kaohsiung; about an hour and a half south of our city by train. We started off early Sunday morning and arrived in Kaohsiung around 9. We met our friends and rented a scooter for ourselves. Six of us began the drive through the city up to the base of the trail.

At the base of the trail and above the city was the beautiful Foguangshan Buddhist temple. This is the largest and wealthiest Buddhist temple in Taiwan. People came from all over to visit it and some to study there if they were going to become part of a monastic community. We came upon it as some of the monks and Buddhist lay people were chanting and praying so I took a little video. The chanting is so beautiful and serene. And the three huge golden Buddhas on the altar were impressive. Click the link below.

click here

 The trail up the mountain was a popular one so it was heavily trod and well marked. We met hikers going up and down and several groups of mountain bikers hurtling down the rocky terrain. We hiked for a while and stopped for some oranges. Sitting at the picnic table eating our fruit we were warned by several passers-by that the monkeys may come and try to steal our snack. We acknowledged the concern and finished eating so we could continue our ascent.

After a couple more twists in the trail one of our friends pointed to a tree above us and there sat a monkey! He was just sitting there staring at us and all the other hikers. He was either used to all the traffic or he was plotting something. We took some pictures and continued on. We then came up to an area with a few covered picnic tables where a lot of people had stopped for some refreshment. Well, apparently it was the place for a lot of monkeys to stop for refreshment too because they were all over the place! I was excited we could get so close and observe them and take pictures but, it is never good when wild animals grow accustomed to getting handouts from humans. They could get sick off the food, they could lose abilities to scavenge their own wild foods or they could become aggressive. We found out that the later was definitely the case.

"Morning Reverie"

"Banana Daydream"

"Contemplation"

We had fun taking pictures and hanging out with the monkeys. They are a native monkey called the Formosan Macaque and are about the size of a 3 year old kid. Our friend, Neo, insisted on taunting one that was in the tree above me and it was getting mad. I thought it was going to jump on my head but luckily it just made nasty faces at Neo.

Monkey Mad!

We moved on up the trail away from the picnic scene. The trail was steep and overlooked the big sprawling city below (along with the smog). A lot of the trail had ropes for you to hold onto as you pulled yourself up from rock to rock. At the top of the trail we ran into a man who had fallen. He seemed disoriented. Jeremy and Neo and a crowd of others encircled him to make sure he was OK. They got the man to sit up and then stand up but he wasn’t making any sense. (Of course, he was speaking Chinese so it didn’t make sense to me but our Taiwanese friends assured us he wasn’t making sense in Chinese.) Jeremy and Neo decided to walk him down the mountain after reaching the paramedics by cell phone. That left us 4 gals to have some lunch at a nearby covered table.

We took out all our delicious items – bread and cheese, nuts, raisins, several tropical fruits, chocolate - and had a very nice meal. There was another woman sitting with us and as she got up to leave she warned us to put everything away because the monkeys might come. But there weren’t any monkeys in sight so we continued eating. Then we heard some crashing in the woods. Out came a pack of wild dogs. Very common in Taiwan. They are everywhere and don’t approach people. They grumbled amongst themselves and we continued eating. The dogs wandered away.

wild monkey and wild dog on hiking trail

We heard the bushes moving again and thought it was the dogs but then I saw him. The big monkey and his smaller side kick. We immediately started putting stuff back into our backpacks but the monkeys moved fast. They came right into our covered table space; the big one jumped onto the bench beside my friend’s open backpack and started rifling through! The nerve! We were yelling and trying to shoo it away but it just turned to us and barred its teeth and continued its search for food. It finally found a guava fruit and jumped off the bench with it to settle a few feet away and eat it tauntingly. The audacity!

Friends on the trail with the monkey food thief

Unlike raccoons in the States who might look for food in an undefended backpack but be easily scared off when you make noise and run at it, these monkeys seem to know you’re not going to actually do them any harm. Or maybe they’ve just got a chip on their shoulder because they’re lower on the evolutionary tree. When Jeremy and Neo finally caught up with us, they told us how they saw a monkey jump onto a little 4 year old girl walking up the trail with her parents! The mother grabbed the girl but she was screaming in terror and I’m sure she wasn’t going to want any stuffed animal monkeys for her bedroom in the future!

It was definitely a unique experience hiking in a mountain full of monkeys. You just don’t get that in Maine and New Hampshire. And they were cute (I even saw a mother and baby) and fascinating to watch. But beware of your belongings and protect your children because these monkeys are naughty!

click for monkeys in motion!