Monkeys!

Jill and I had a pretty busy weekend.  On Saturday we were able to register for our Hong Kong IDs, set up a Hong Kong bank account, and look at some apartments.  Looking at a few different places helped us get an idea of what we can get at certain price points.  I think our biggest priority, amongst other things, finding a place where we'll be able to get to and from work as conveniently as possible.  Wish us luck!  After all that we spent some time in Lan Kwai Fong before heading back to the hotel.

Today (Sunday) we decided to go on a hike near the hotel at the Shing Mun Reservoir.  Our initial plan was to do a 1.5 hour hike...and thanks to a little navigation error we ended up doing about a 5 hour hike and we covered almost 8 miles.  It turned out to be an awesome mistake because the hike was awesome.  We were told before we went that we might see some monkeys on the trail, so when we first started we kept looking for them but saw nothing.  We were lucky to see a few butterflies and a bird on our way up (we ended up hiking to a point called Grassy Hill, but as you might be able to tell from the photo below, it was a little bit bigger than a hill).  It was pretty hazy day, so while the view wasn't as good as it could have been on a clear day, it was still pretty great.

After huffing and puffing our way to the top we started to make our way back down.  We saw no wild life on the way up, but the way down was a different story.  We immediately happened on a herd of what appeared to be wild cows.

They had no brandings/markings/tags of any kind...so we guessed they were wild.  Alright, the trip down was already better than the trip up on the wild life front.  We both really wanted to see some monkeys but figured that was probably asking for too much.  And then, we came down around a bend to find this little devil...

We were both so excited to finally see one!  So, we sat there for a minute taking pictures and as we started getting closer another guy passed us and gave the monkey the wrapper of whatever he had been eating (which you're obviously not supposed to do).  As Jill and I started walking by the monkey with the wrapper, the little bastard charged me!  All my training in how to handle charging beasts kicked in and I made myself try to look bigger by spreading my arms out and standing my ground.  The little scrapper was not intimidated at all and got to within about a foot of me before stopping and going back to his wrapper.  Not gonna lie...he scared me. After the confrontation dissolved we started our way down the hill, but Curious George decided he hadn't had enough and started following us!

He finally gave up and Jill and I made it to the bottom of the hill...only to find ourselves literally surrounded by monkeys.  Given our recent encounter we were a little nervous, but there were actually a few other people around so it made us feel more comfortable.  From there we got our Jane Goodall on and were able to snap some good pics.

We saw monkeys the rest of the way back down to the starting point of the trail.  We figured that we didn't see any monkeys on the first leg of the trip because they (being the crafty little beings they are) wait for the trash bins along the trail to fill up with everyone's scraps before they come down out of the trees to see what they can find.  Regardless, it was a great hike (we're both going to be really sore).