Sun Moon Lake (Ceh, Meh i Leh)

Three brothers, Czech, Mech and Lech (later two stand for Russian and Polish-say I am kind of Polish also, no?) go into the world from Krapina (where from the Homo Sapiens Krapiniensis is, if you did not know) to make three nations... In Vikipedia you will find on this (about the root of the word Villain): "There is the Croatian legend of the three brothers Ceh, Meh, and Leh, who wanted to get rid of the Roman rule and establish unity in ancient Croatia, but their sister "Villana" was in love with a Roman prefect and betrayed her brothers plot. Villana was killed by her brothers." Croatian version you can see at http://web.tiara.sinica.edu.tw/~miki/Blog/SMoon/clmeh.html
So, this time three Slavic guys met to conquer a hill above the Sun Moon Lake, Mt. Shueishe (2059 m). About the Lake itself see http://www.sunmoonlake.gov.tw/smlen/main.jsp. One impression I give here - it is the largest lake in Taiwan.

Three foreigners were quite a sight for the aborigines there, I think, usually Taiwanese, Japanese or Korean people visit here. Here are David and Oleg in the stop somewhere near Nantou.

This picture looks as any similar picture from Ohrid, Bled or some similar lake, yes? Atmosphere is also similar, resort-like.

We came friday night and overslept in private accomodation, quite cheap (40 eur all together) and good room in something what at 1st seemed rather obscure-but actual room is in the building behind the front house (left here in the pic), there was an interesting labirint to go there... Very nice owners, speaking English - their son who works in USA was with the visit so we had surprisingly easy conversation, themselves also, surprisingly, although elderly people, were speaking English, probably spent some time in the USA.

The village of Itashao is rather 'uninteresting' (as correctly written in the Lonely Planet)

Entrance to the aboriginal 'village' where from (go straight and then left and almost to the end, until you see the stairs) we started our hike:

1850 stone stairs,

and then few thousands more of wooden ones - which in some places looked as here:

They were a nightmare at descent from the mountain.
Lonely Planet says it is 7-8 hrs return hike, we made it in some 5 hrs. The lake is at some 750m, and the hike was really steep most of the time. Some nice views opened from time to time in the forest:

For the 1st time I managed to take pic of the butterfly-in Taiwan it is really heaven for them. Often I saw big, colorful ones. This was black one, big as a palm:

Hike through the jungle is not my favorite, I discovered.

I prefer rocky views, which are here available only above 3000m, here, thousand meters lower, only glimpse of some rocks under the cover of ground, as we reached the top parts of the mountain:

Proof I was there - notice the dark color of my T-shirt...it is WET, it is not easy to walk in these (sub)tropical areas, really not easy... good way to leave some overweight there.

Beautiful bamboo forest, after the typhoon looking like if some giant would play the game throwing sticks around, was for sure the most striking sight on our hike, we had to pass directly through such 'sticks', this is not some 'side-view':

Descent from the top was really tiresome, and then we still had all the stairs before us:

Even when I am writing this (Monday, and the hike was during saturday!) I feel my leg muscles quite ummmmh! PLEASE do not put STAIRS on hiking trails!
When we came down, we noticed we might easily be cheated:

On the way back we stopped near some newer temple above the lake

It was guarded by this cute elephant in 1:1 measure

That's all folks!