Okarito Trig Walk

Since we couldn't do the longer Alex Knob trek at Franz Joseph, we pieced together an afternoon of hiking, between the glacier walk and this next nearby trek: the Okarito Trig Walk.

Okarito is home to a tidal estuary, a former gold mining town. The Trig Walk starts by a brief jaunt through Okarito's wetland (see above):

Then into some hilly rainforest bits... gorgeous plants:

Rainforest-y:

And when we reached the top, lovely, albeit a bit grey, views of the ocean, the lagoon and the mountains:

The clouds even parted for a second:

My close-up skillz are improving, no?

On our way back down from the view point, we ran into a couple of super cool looking birds that were flitting around like they were hopped up on Mountain Dew. And thus difficult to capture on camera. I don't know if you can see, but smack in the middle of the image is the white and black fan of the fantail bird... these mofos are crazy and factor into one of our misadventures later in the trip. Remember them.

Hong Kong: View from the Top

The day after our cloud afternoon in Hong Kong, Tim and I decided to take the Peak Tram to the top of Victoria Peak to see the Hong Kong cityscape from above. The Peak Tram has been in operation since 1888, a funicular (i.e. pulled by a cable) that travels 1.4 kilometers, carrying people up the 552 meters to the peak. At times it was so steep we were practically laying down in the seats:

Shot of the tracks from above:

Ah, but the views.  Gorgeous!  We were so lucky to have a pretty, sunny day after the previous day's torrential rain and fog:

So the near side of the city is Hong Kong island, including the Central district.  The far part, on the other side of Victoria Harbour, is Kowloon (Hong Kong is actually comprised on several hundred small islands):

In this shot you can see some of the many cargo ships destined for and/or coming from Hong Kong's big port:

The view from the Sky Terrace is totally worth it:

After hanging out a bit on the Sky Terrace, we decided to grab some wontons, noodles and pork at Mak's Noodles. Pretty tasty and just what we were looking for:

Wanting to walk off the lunch, we decided to do the Peak Circle walk around Lugard and Harlech roads.  So pretty! Great views all the way around:

Much fewer buildings on the other side:

And some crazy trees to remind you that the jungle would take over if they let it:

A better view of the harbor and all the container ships:

Singapore's Southern Ridges Trail

While in Singapore, Tim and I like to take the opportunity to walk around a lot because of the wide, non-open-sewer-adjacent sidewalks and lovely public parks...  we heard about a cool hiking (well, walking... this is still Singapore) trail that spans several of those parks, traverses some of the remaining patches of jungle and has some great views: the Southern Ridges Trail.  We decided to give it a go... over 9 km of jungle trail spanning several parks, accessible by public transportation... what more can you ask of an urban park?

We started out by taking the train to the Harbourfront MRT station, then climbing the steep steps up through the secondary forest to the top of Mount Faber.  At the top there was a pretty sweet view of the surrounding apartments, distant business towers, and the cable car to Sentosa, Singapore's resort area:

You could see a bit of Singapore's famous port through the trees, as well as a giant statue depicting the city's famous mascot, the Merlion:

 From there, we fended off busloads of tourists wielding umbrellas to make it through to the Henderson Waves pedestrian bridge, which is this cool, wavy structure that connects Mount Faber to the next hill, Telok Blangah Hill Park, 36 meters above the road below:

By this time, we were overheating and dripping with sweat, so we stopped to buy a drink.  I caught sight of these signs, which reminded me of one of EPA's mascots, Slim Bin, a favorite of all of my friends who spent time at the office formerly known as the Office of Solid Waste:

From there we kept on the Southern Ridges Trail on the Hilltop Walk, where we saw some pretty massive and cool looking trees as well as a massive and cool looking spider who had his web strung from tree to tree across a road:

Next we went through the Forest Walk, a raised walkway that winds through some pretty secondary forest: 

Next, Floral Walk and Hort Park, a lovely botanical garden:

Aaaand, we ended with the Canopy Walk to Kent Ridge Park, a hill that was used for defense of Singapore during WWII.   More views of Singapore's vast shipping industry as well as a couple big monitor lizard sightings:

And, in conclusion, some of my favorite signs from around the park:

I love the angry monkey face:

 

They said poo...  heh heh:

How one might grab a bird in this manner is a mystery to me: