A day at the natural Li Sung hot spring in Motian
Trip Start
Nov 06, 2006
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63
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Trip End
Dec 31, 2008
Motien,
Taiwan
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Total distance: 7 km
Altitude up : 500m
Altitude down: 500m
Wake up at 6:00 am after a finally pretty good night's sleep. Beakfast is downstairs. I order and get
- Hot dog / 4 small suasages with nothing else
- Dan Ping/ no egg
- Hamburger/ meat patty, o bread
Now you mix all these unhealthy things with some onions and you have a different kind of breakfast
Tea picking
.We learn that two busses at 9:15 and 15:15 go to Taitung and one at 9:30am to Tienchih, the direction of the hotpring in Motien. Decision is quickly made to stay another night and visit the hot spring.
On the bus we meet a medicine student who is on his way to the Forest Bureau station we had visited yesterday and walk alone for 5 days ( each stop has a hut built by Yu Shan National Park and water ) past the pond and along the South-North ridge to the link of the mid cross way called Ba Tong Guan and end in Dong Pu, a hot spring mountain village on the west side. All the things he carries with him are extra light and extra expensive ( backpack only 1kg, sleeping bag for 0C at 10.000NTD, no tent ). His whole luggage is 15 kg ( similar to mine ) including noodles, apples and tomatoes. As he is a medicine student I ask him for high altitude sickness remedies. He suggest to try Viagra as it has turned out to be useful against mountain sickness as it opens the vessels - I just wonder what the side ( or basically main ) effect may do on the trail. We wish him a good hike and good weather, which it is today.
After 20 minutes the bus stops at Motien and we begin immediatelly or way down to the hot spring
Yakou ridge with cloud cream on top
. At first the way is a one lane concrete way, then turning into a 500m dirt trail leading about 200m down. After that the trail becomes almost vertical dropping about 300m. Several parts with ropes which require simple climbing or just sliding on the buds. Shortly before we get to the bottom of the valley we get a glimps of the river shining clear and green/blue. A group of 8 people, who had stayed in the Motien homestay are already about to leave - they came here very early in the morning. A man shows us the best way to get to the other side of the river without getting too wet with our clothes still on. This includes balancing over a tree trunk in the river. From there it is about 100m upstream, then its getting wet in the river. So we change our clothes into swimming suits. Then it is 50 m along a rock wall hanging onto ropes. From there we can see the hot spings with steaming water flowing down the rock walls in different colors - very pretty. We then have to cross the river again at a place marked by a rope. We have to hold tightly on to it as the river is pretty rushing at this section. The hot spring is just at the entrance to a pretty, but short gorge. The hot water running down the walls, forming stalactites which shine in green and white, a really pretty picture - sorry my photos did not get very good as I had to take the photos against the sun reflecting in the stream. There is no other perspective from where to take the photos, except waiting a few hours until the sun will have changed position
Hot water running down the rock wall
. The hot water is running into manmade pools, just using the available sand and stones. The temperature can be regulated ( sorry not by opening a tap ), but by rearranging the stones mixing the hot spring and cold river water. It's fun standing under the dropping hot spring water. Then I jump into the river and swim about 30m against the stream into the gorge - brrrrr, is that cold -, around a bend just to see that the gorge finishes very soon. Then I drift back with the water flow to the hot water to warm up. After about 40 minutes four young people arrive and we leave. Only so few people on a Sunday. The way up to road No. 20 takes about 70 minutes - we meet again the 8 person group from the morning, which is really taking it slowly. They share a water melon with us and we have a little talk. After a short waiting time at the bus stop the bus arrives - same driver as in the morning - and for 29 NTD we get back to Lidao. It's a lazy afternoon with readimg, writing, walking in the village, watching tea picking ( the Pillipine lady from our homestay is also picking tea alongside another South-East Asian lady ). The kids of the village are leaving the school after the weekend activity comes to a close.They carry bags of sweets which were left over from the event. Later afternoon a young man arrives on his motorcycle. He wants to stay in the Youth Hostel, but this is already closed for years ( we were told about this already during our Meishan stay - people in the village did not like the Youth Activity Center as they wanted to run their own homestays. Now noone comes and it seems like a lose-lose situation.) We help him to ask for the prie of our homestay and he really gets a 400 NTD price for a two person room. He is 27 years of age and a resident surgent in a hospital in Tainan. He does not like his job, always living in the hospital and a very stressful environment with many hours
Bus back to Motien to go down to hotspring
. He wants to change his carreer but has no clue yet what to do next - reminds me of someone very close to me, just he is about half my age. He joins us for dinner at the same place we went last night.We hear ( better I hear, Tsai Chin understands ) an announcement over the village loudspeaker of a practice gathering in preparation for some big festival beginning of June in Nantou County. When we arrive at the place ( we ask some people where it is ) the group is still sitting together, chatting and eating. An older lady invites us to join and try their Chiao Mi Fan ( Millet rice ), marinated and salted raw fish which tasts like anchovies, local soup and pig ear. We like it all, really great. Then they sit in a circle and begin their multi-vocal ( polyphonic ) singing, for which the Bunun culture is renouned. It is wonderful, great and a real feast for the ears - so raw and natural and just with us a listeners. For my feeling they are ready to go to compete in the festival and be a front runner. I call Angel and Neal to give them a taste of the singing on the phone.
When we get back to our place another group of 3 has checked in and now comes the joke. The man in the 3 person group is the senior resident doctor of the same hospital our other young doctor is from and by this his boss - the poor guy, he wants to run away from work and hospital ( in terms of trip and life planning ) and runs into the arms of his boss in the middle of nowhere with only 6 guests in the whole village - shi... happens, sorry. The young doc wants to go to sleep early - good luck, it never works for me. Back on the balcony I write some lines and then go to bed. In the night I hear the dum, bum sound of the hunter's guns.
