The Butterflies of Sun Moon Lake

Sun Moon Lake is the largest lake in Taiwan. Nestled up the highlands where the air is cooler and the humidity is low, it is surrounded by layer upon layer of steep hills that recede away into misty nothingness in the distance. Dawn casts an orange glow across the still waters. If you have a generous budget and a bit of luck, you can stay at The Lalu Hotel and watch the light shift and change from your private balcony, or slide back the walls and soak up the view from the bath.

It was apparently Chiang Kai-shek's favorite holiday retreat, and The Lalu is on the site of his former holiday residence. The newly constructed wing - designed by Australian Kerry Hill Architects - nestles unobtrusively into the surrounding greenery, and is simply the most gorgeous, tranquil and generally lovely hotel I have ever seen. Unfortunately, there are a number of high-rise monstrosities nearby. Still, if you are looking out at the lake, or strolling around the well maintained boardwalk that rings the lake's edge, you can forget they exist altogether.

On the weekends couples drape themselves decorously around the paths and groves, big powerpuff creations of white organza and sharp suits being snapped by wedding photographers among the bamboo, as massive butterflies gambol about overhead.

"We don't have many butterflies here," said the Hotel Guy. Was he mad? Spectacular flutter-bys were everywhere. "Oh, in Taiwan we do," he explained. "We are called the Kingdom of the Butterfly. But not so much here. Much more in the South"

The mind boggles. Its hard to imagine better butterfly action than we were getting at Sun Moon Lake.The highlights were probably the massive creature of black filigree with fillings of white, red, orange and yellow. This one took the prize for sheer gaudiness. It was flopping around amongst the Morning Glory Flowers, big as a dinner plate and frames by the azure waters of Sun Moon Lake like a little gravity-defying stained glass window.

The dull brown one liked having his photo taken. The rest insisted on hopping about in a very un-photogenic manner.My particular favorites were the huge black ones, as big as your hand, with metallic blue on lower wings fringed with a lovely rococco flourish of fiddly-bits. We had seen a number of these big black beasts, but I struggled to catch one on film. They flitted around in the shadows, hid behind ferns, pretended to be falling leaves and generally acted compulsively camera-shy.

We were at the end of our last walk before leaving for Taipei, and I had abandoned all hope of getting one on film when suddenly there it was, jet black a with dark green and bright blue splashes flashing in the sunlight. This particular one was lazier than all its cousins, and actually stopped on the lantana occasionally. All that fast-finger practice of playing arcade games on the plane came to the fore as I snapped away maniacally, though the rather blurry splash to your left is the best I could manage.