Hot springs and waterfalls on way to Meishan
Trip Start
Nov 06, 2006
1
58
99
Trip End
Dec 31, 2008
Meishan,
Taiwan
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Total Distance: 24 km
Altitude up: 800m
Altitude down: 100m
It's 6:30 am. A look outside the window shows a fine day - fine means it does not rain. Also the view is beautiful with the Laonung river winding and rushing below and the mountains blanketed in fresh green.
At the breakfast shop, the morning meeting place of the village, we meet all the people from the previous day, the KTV singers and dancers, the worker from the construction side/ bus and .... I guess 50 to 60 students of different age ( Primary School and Junior High School )
Having breakfast with the kids
. They are having breakfast before taking the bus to school. The shop's capacity is overwhelmed. I do not know how the owners get it all sorted out as everyone orders at the same time - I am not sure they will ever get their money. " Milk tea, perl milk tea, Hamburger, toast with all kind of things on top, Lobo gau , Guo Tiae" All this and more is then covered with Ketchup or La Dchiau ( spicy sauce ) which stands unwisely on the tables - somehow I have the feeling the kids only need the eating stuff to get a foundation for all the Ketchup. It is a coming and going. Then the first bus arrives and the kids run out. One shouts: " Will pay this afternoon " as the owners are too busy to collect the money. Then the second bus picks up the other kids. At 7:30 am we go back to church dorm and we leave shortly after. It does not take long and we arrive at the Junior high school and go in to visit the teacher of the evening before. I meet the young English teacher of the school - one who is not afraid to talk English-, but we are told that the teacher we are looking for is out " Muo Yu" as they say, " Touching fish ", which means being away during work time. We say good bye, visit a waterfall not too far off the road - sorry, do not remember the name. We then decide to walk to the "Yu Shuei" hot spring, which was very much recommended by the local people the evening before. The sign says only 2.0 km, which seems pretty ok, perhaps an hour forth and back
Hektic-all kids have breakfast before bus comes
. It goes up and up and after 40 minutes still no hot spring in sight. When Tsai Chin calls the hot spring the man says that the sign is wrong and the correct distance is 4.5km .... shiii. We still decide to walk on, up at first and then it goes down. After about 15 minutes we see the hot spring below on a grey sand bank beside a river, concrete basins covered with black nets providing some protection against the sun. As the hot spring still lies 150 meters below us and does not seem to be so interesting, we decide seeing shall be enough and walk back from here. On the way we meet two men cooking instant noodles on their transporter. They work in the fields and we get to talk to them. One man knows us - he saw us on the road when he passed by us driving the school bus. He will pick up the kids again at 5:00pm. In the meantime they take care of their Litze and Meitze trees. As we have also just seen a field with some interesting bushes with small green berries of which we do not know what they are, we ask and they tell us that these are coffee bushes. The fist time I see coffee beans in nature and not roasted in a vacuum package. They tell us that these bushes belong to Pin Di Ren ( the Chinese from the flat lands - Flachlaender). The Indiginous Peoples are the Shan Di Ren or Mountain People.They tell us that they do not know the technique how to grow coffee, so they will observe and then perhaps copy. They are interested in it as the coffee bushes already bring rich harvest in the first year, while their fruit trees, the traditional crop in the area, takes years before they can pick the first fruits
How much katchup can be put on a burger?
.Walking on we get to a small stream, where we take a short break. A man is repairing a pump used to pump water from the stream to his farm for use in the household, the fields and as drinking water. We sit down near a small waterfall. I take out the German bread I carry as my last resort delicacy with me since I bought it in Taipei ( Oma Ursel, Yong Kang Street side lane near Hsin Yi Road ) and some cookies. Just then my bread in a plastic bag slides down the rock and ... splash ... into the stream. It's immediately washed away. Tsai Chin who sits downstream tries to get it, but not success. Then, lucky or not, the bread is caught between other branches in a dead end on the other side of the stream. I try to get it moving again with a two meter plastic pipe, sitting on a rock in the middle of the stream, but it does not work. No - I am not going to give up on my bread, although it is most likely soaking wet. I take off my shoes and socks and go with all other clothes into the river. After some trials I am successful. The man with the water pump has meanwhile suspened his repair work and decided to watch the action. As I had expected the bread is soaking wet. I press it out a bit, but still keep it. If others can drink the water I can eat it! Sunny, walking and the wet clothes are no problem.
Back on road No.20 we see many suspension bridges, of which we try out many, go to a homestay which is located on the other side of a suspension bridge painted with Lily flowers, which are grown on this Chin Suei Plateau. [ For several indiginous tribes the lily signifies purity and beauty
Kids leave with bus, grown-ups come
. During special ceremonies, warriers who had successfully hunted many wild boar and chaste unmarried women were allowed to wear the lily in their headdresses. This decoration served as a source of praise, exhortation and expectation. ] Back on the road we meet two dogs in terrible condition with much of their hair gone through skin deseases and mal nutrition. They are very skinny. As we do not have much to give the dogs I try the German bread I had just safed from the water, not having much hope that the dogs would eat this unusual food. I am wrong. They quickly swallow it, piece by piece until the whole loaf is gone - Hunger zwingt es runter - hunger forces it down. It makes my efforts to get back the bread even more worthwhile! Fushing village, the center for Ai-Yu ( a fruit used to make jelly ). At the entrance of the village mosaic reliefs show the process of making Ai-Yu. We eat Ai-Yu bin ( ice ), which is a mix of the jelly and shreddered ice and some lemon taste - it's great and refreshing. One of the two skinny dogs suddenly appears around the corner - she has followed us quite some way. I buy here two cans of fish in tomato sauce, which she eats very fast. We are told and see signs that Fushing also has river hiking and a wild hot spring ( about 2.5 hours each way ). When we exit the village we see smoke rising from the other side of the river valley. Coming closer the smoke turns out to be dust rising from an ongoing land slide
Millet in traditional basket
. We hear a rumbling sound and see dust rise when more stones and earth slide down a big scar cutting into the mountain slope. It must be a very terrifying sound when a major landslide echoes in a valley. We are damn lucky that it did not happen on our side of the road.Mailan village ( La Vi Lang in aboriginal language) looks very organized, pretty clean and has a beautiful church. A lady from the Bunun tribe and owner of a very impressive homestay at the entrance of the village tells us the following:
- The leader of the village has got all villagers together to find ways how to improve the village - now we know why the village looks to positively different.
- Names in Bunun tribe: Bune tribe is in the social order of a Patriarchate, while most other tribes are organized as Matriarchate. Still also Bunun women can after marriage use their family name in front of their husband's family name.
We want to eat here and Tsai Chin knows a Bunun restaurant which got several prices for their cooking. To our disappointment this and all other restaurants are closed. Later we learn the reason from some people who are BBQing - the village does not have water for the past four days because a pipe has been destroyed by a landslide
Aboriginal old lady
. Water is usually collected in the upper sections of the mountain streams. It shows again that life is tough in these rugged mountains. With a half empty stomach we walk on the last stretch to Meishan. It begins to rain and continues so on and off all the way. At 3:30pm we arrive in Meishan Kou ( 1015 m ), the upper part of the village - the main part lies about 150m below. We stay in the Youth Activity Center, which is very nice and almost empty. With IYH pass we pay 500 NTD per person for a really nice room, which usually would cost about 2.000 to 3.000NTD. Rooms have either views to the mountains or into a pleasant inner court yard with a pond and willow trees. From 4:30 to 6:00pm we have coffee on the terrace and coffee shop depending on the rain. At 6:00 the first real meal in the Youth Hostel for 120 NTD and the boss gives us each a glass of red wine. At 7:30 we walk a bit through the upper village, where we meet a man in his 50s from Hsinchu, who travels arround Taiwan on his motorbike. Near by one river flowing down the mounatin we look for glow worms. We see a few flickering their light to attract a partner. In the village we buy Litze and Suei Mi Tao ( Peaches ) produced in the area. The female boss ( lao ban niang ) says that they are organic as they are grown over 1000m where there are less worms. Meishan is a trading place for these fruits like Litze, Meitze and peaches, which are grown in the area
Wash day
. The fruits are packed in large bags and collected on the central place. Here farmers sell their products to retailers, like the moving cars, wholesalers or factories which process them into wine or products like Suan Mei ( sour plums ) - we pay 30 NTD /teki ( 600g ) and the moving car 15 NTD/teki.Then the lady says that the kids are curious about foreigners. They say foreigner's eyes look like the once of cats. They are curious to know if they shine in the night like cat's eyes. I answer no but joke that they only glow after midnight.
The kids go to school in Taoyuan ( 17km ) - we walked through there -, take a bus at 6:00am and have to wake up at 5:00am. In this way also the mother's day begins pretty early.
Till 9:30pm I sit in the coffee shop and write my log book, hoping the next day's weather will be better. We decide to stay one more day here as the place is pretty nice and we have not seen the village and the surrounding yet.
