Day 2 evening:Going to the vistor centre and walking around

After a brief rest, we wanted to go out for another walk and tried to find our way to the "Rui Tai Gu Dao" loosely translated as "The old path from Rui li to Tai he" but on the way there on foot, it started to have a slight drizzle and since we now that the path is partly destroyed by the typhoon last year, we decided to just keep walking to the visitor centre. But lo and behold, while we were on the road, the husband of the owner of out hostel passed by on his truck, he stopped and gave us a lift to the visitor centre and even told us they have a firefly exibit on the 2nd floor.

Tea ladies on the tea hills in the distance

The modern Rui li visitor centre(yes, it's air-conditioned)

Inside the vistor centre, you can get lots of information for both Rui li and the surround few villages.There are brochures to take and a lady there to assist you if you have any queries.On the second floor of the building is the firefly exibit. Rui Li is famous for it's fireflies . There say you can see a whole hill glowing with fireflies starting in March till around late June, Now how AWESOME  is that.That is also when our hostel (Ruo Lan Shan Zhuang) is the busiest. For the last 40 years the owners of the hostel who owns the hill that the hostel is on protects the envirnment there such that fireflies thrive on their property during the firefly season. Before March , the owners will go out and start to catch spiders in their fields so that the spiders do not eat up the larve of the fireflies, they do not use any insecticides on their hill and do everything from planting to weeding mostly by manpower. That is why you can find an abundance of wildlife around the hostel

Firefly exhibit on the 2nd floor with English translations 

On the 3rd floor deck of the visitor centre 

There is a video room on the 2nd floor of the visitor centre for videos of the surrounding areas in different languages

After the visit to the visitor centre and getting a tour map of the area, we went for a stroll along the "Ginger Lily River Trail" The Ginger flower in this region is white and it is in bloom now in summer(August). The smell is light and sweet. The locals pick the flowers and mixed the chopped flowers with eggs to make a special local ginger flower omelette which tastes EXQUISITE. 

                                         

                                                           White Ginger flowers

                              Signs along the trail.(Most of the tourist trails are clearly marked,and in English too )

By now you would have noticed that most of the places in the hills can be reached by foot .But if you want to go somewhere further afield, you can always approach the hostel reception and they can help you with the transportation.

                        More tea hills seen on our way back.Check out the elevation, picking tea is no easy task

It is getting late , so we headed back to the hostel and our 5 dishes, 1 soup + rice dinner.

To attest the fact that this place is all natural. Check out with we found the last two nights.These bugs just kind of ermmm.. were around.....