Butterfly Valley Resort

So, this is for Tuesday. Chunnan and I got up bright and early and headed for the train station to hope a train to Reisuie (say it like Raceway and you'll be close).

Here's a picture of the inside of the train. This was no bullet train. It took us 3.5 hours to go about half-way down the east coast. The high speed train took less than half that time to go twice that distance.

Reisuei s a tiny little town (pic above is the train station) and taking a bathroom break there was my first introduction to a squat toilet. Luckily I did not have to actually use the toilet in its full capacity, but it was a little scary nonetheless. I was hoping that the resort had western toilets...and t did. Yeah!

We met the shuttle driver from the resort and a 20 minute ride brought us to the Butterfly Valley Resort. The main building is shown above. Our room was on the second floor.

A view of one of the mountains from in front of the BVR main building. The mountains, though fairly low, were almost always cloud-topped.

The BVR reception desk from the second floor balcony.

The dining area from the second floor balcony.

Apart from it's abundant butterflies, the BVR is known for its hot springs. Here are some photos of the hot spring areas. The pool at the bottom of the shot, and the red pool, and the blue pool just above that, are all hot spring pools. Each is a little hotter than the last, with the top heat at about 104F. The other two pools on the left are cold pools (about 65F). We used the red pool most. BTW, the Red and Blue pools are those colors due to the mineral salts they add to the spring water.

This is the jacuzzi pool and it was about 98F. There are a variety of stations with different bubble or jet or whirlpool effects to address different areas of your body. Chunnan liked the round one near the center which filled the whole area in churning roiling bubbles for an all over water massage. I spent more time under the waterfalls. Two of them can be seen at the far side of the pool flanking the two lounge chairs. There were four more off to the right. Each waterfall produces a powerful flood of water which you stand under as it pummels your back and shoulders and neck. Very invigorating, especially since we got to the pools early each day and the reserve water in the tanks was not fully warm...those waterfalls start warm, then go bracingly cold, and finally warm back up again. I loved it!

For some reason we never made it down the these three pools at the far end of the water area, so I don't know if they were hot or cold.

Here's Chunnan tasting a selection of the wines they have in the gift shop. We bought one to bring back to his brother who has done so many nice things for us this trip.

The bathroom in our room has a very nice deep tub and Chunnan said he'd never had a bubble bath before...so in he went!

On Wednesday we did some exploring...see the next post.