Wenshan wild hotspring
On road 8, at the 166km mark, there is a wild hotspring, that is announced on lonely planet...
Road 8 has signs every 1km about its distance from est to east...
Coming from east, at this tunnel walk on the path to the right...
It is a pertty easy walk
With some cosy tunnels...
And some pridge...before it reaches at the bottom of the gorge...
Maximum 5 taiwanese people at a time...or 2 foreigners?
It use to be a much more commercial hotspring
With some warning sign, since the government does not maintain it anymore
One has to walk on some cliff to enter the stairs
The local people can show you how to reach the hotspring
The stairs then goes down to the wild hotspring
Pretty nice place...and very untouched
One can also see the road from here...
Many locals where chillin at the river bank
At the hottest pool it was easy to burn yourself
Some peopel took foot bath where the hot water reached the cold...
It is a perfect place for a 30 minutes break when visiting the Taroko Gorge
Mr Kris was combining filming and SPA
The stairs up were pretty narrow...but its easier to walk up than down
Some drone dirving around filming the Gorge were also spotted...
A trip to Bayan wild Hotspring
Early morning queuing at jiantan MRT, bus 15 should take me to some trail entrance for the Bayan trail...
...many locals are here, since its weekend...
...omg a fjällräven bag...
...after some time, the small bus of 15 arrived...(but 5 is the ones that most ppl took)...
At this visit center the trail started...
...with some info about the park...
...and the route...
...my friend brought his speaker..playing scandinavian music...
...some brige..."10 people or 1000kg" the elevators usully say...im 95-100, I guess its "5 foreigner or 10 taiwanese"...
...lizzard...can u see it?
...most of the first walk looked like this...
....and some part we had to take stairs...
...the locals usually hike with some super heavy outfit...I never understood why...
...this part reminded me of the caoling trail...some grass fields...
...and some high peak in the horizon...
...not sure where we are heading...but looking for "bayan"...
...many locals seem to go here...most take car or scooter...car is very slow...since taipei is a multi million ppl city, and many of them try to hit the country side when its weekend...(scooter can often pass by the queuing cars)...
...local cow...
...Bayan 4.8km...
...and warning signs...
the trail heads downhill from now...
...Bayan 3.9...
...still stairs...
...and some smoke from some dry geyser...
...this seem to be some historical trail...
...and some ancient temple...
...but this one seems new..
...some 200-300 year old civilization...
...still have some distance to go...
...and some old bridge construction...
...ahrd to see it...
...this trail part was broken...
...and this too...
...but there was a new part we could take...and we found a small cave...
...and some small waterfall...
...no "bayan"...but I think we are pretty close...
...some advanced water system...
...and some volvanic activity...
...omg "aboriginal period"...
...thats my new period...prior 1684...
...maybe its possible to take bus 1717 directly to Bayan...
...or car...
Yangminshan peak...
...back on road 2...
...and some military area...
the guy on the taiwaense sign has a short neck...
...we also made soe food stop at a local market...
...and had to cross some rice fields...
...a small creek making the rice fields wet...
...this field you could pay to walk on...
...these are the people who paid...not sure why...
...closer to Bayan...and more hot areas...but not that smelly...I think this hotsprings are not sulfur based...
...some large volcanic field...
more smoke...
...and anohter 100meters we saw the wild hotspring...
...some warning signs...
...many locals seem to go here...
...warm water from this creek...
...meeting colder water from some small river...
...it was probably 35-40 degrees...
...some pools had cold water also...
...but the air temp was probably 25-30..not hotspring swiming temp, in my opinion...
The guide...he likes to ask foreigners where they are from...
...and the hike continued downhill...
..."america" these 2 white ppl replied, when the guide asked..."oh, freedom" the guide replied...truly the country of freedom...
...the river heading west...
and some civilization...
...not late we arrived to some local parking lot...
...with lockers...
"Bayan hotspring resort"...
On road 101....
...this road was not that heaily trafficed as road 2...
some land slice...
bus 1717 and its schedule...
...it was almost empty when we entered...bus after some stops it was very full...
the guide showed me some euorpean book...even went christian cus he likes "western culture"...I tried to learn more about christianity from him...
...ppl lining up fo the bus...
...and a payphone...in case your cellphone runs out of battery? They can aswell have a charger station instead...
A visit to Hsinchu
I went to hsinchu yesterday...
Had a meeting with some old friends...
At a restaurant in Hsinchu downtown...
Its one of these "try to imitate fancy italian/french dishes and service" resturant that is far to expensive...
I had pasta, my friends ordered some more brunch style food..
I had an egg in my food...
We later on went to the beerworks (beer place), that I never been to (there are 4-5 pf them in hsinchu,that sells hsinchu made beer)...
It was a little bit similar to the other beerwork that i have been to...
Kai was there...
I had some burgers...since i started to run regurlary recently, i feel that I need to eat alot...just like in the old days...
We went up at 10, to get to some wild hotsprings...(thats what they are calles here, hotsprings that u dont need to pay for)...
Anders drove the car...
We had GPS, but did barely need it...
Wow..."Dabajianshan"...the place i wanna go to almost "the most" right now in taiwan...
A far up 7-11...a taiwanese way to recognize civilization...
We had GPS, but did barely need it...
Wow..."Dabajianshan"...the place i wanna go to almost "the most" right now in taiwan...
A far up 7-11...a taiwanese way to recognize civilization...
Aboriginal pattern...so nice...
And a nice church, maybe not "top 10" but atleast "top 100" in taiwan...
There are many nice houses far up in the taiwanese moutains roads...
We also used a map that I downloaded, to get the directions of this "wild hotspring"...
It was a small road...
Steep down towards a river...
very steep...
And the road was not suitable for "normal city cars"...
Some big stones were found near the river bank...
A guy told us how to find the hotspring...
Wow...a country road car...perfect to find nice hotsprings in taiwan...
Wow...over there we found some people...
Someone had put up some tents...
And used concrete to make some pools...
Anders found a cave...
I found a bigger one...
Bubbles in the water...
It was around 35-28 degrees in the first pool...
There was some pipes that enabled fresh river water to enter...
3or 4 pools, where 1 was outside the "tent" area...
Ander also took a swim in the cold river...
He also took some cold water to make the hotspring more fresh...
Many bubbles...
Bojun went for a walk down hill...
This was really in a djungle...
Most hotsprings are near the river bank in this area...
Far up there, and further some 20-40km, is dabajian shan...
Anders took many pictures....
Then, after some hour, we went back to the car...
Wow...some waterfall at the other side of the valley...
And some broad river...in Hsinchu that looked like a river in yilan...
We later on went to Neiwan...
I wanted to eat wild boar meat...
YEp, wild boar "or mountain pig" as its called in chinese...
They are not as big as in sweden...
I also found amilk store, from Ruishui, which i visited last week at the east coast...
They had a museum for "interesting things"...
I bought an icecream asn some liter of milk...
And went to eat some noodles...
As usual I was watcomng the maps on the wall for a long while...looking for interesting places...
Wow, nice mountains that I want to climb...
And a huge toad...
I thought this was a muffin, but it turned out to be some slime thing...
They had alot of fire crackers left since chinese new year...
Later on i took the bus to Taipei. and found a guy with both Fjällräven bag and ikea bag...thats impressive...
I went to a resturant in ximen later on...to another "italian/french" wannabee resturant...
And a nice church, maybe not "top 10" but atleast "top 100" in taiwan...
There are many nice houses far up in the taiwanese moutains roads...
We also used a map that I downloaded, to get the directions of this "wild hotspring"...
It was a small road...
And a bad road, with many warning signs...
We were told to "Follow the main road" to get ther...but many times the road split into two...and both looked like "tha main road":..
We were told to "Follow the main road" to get ther...but many times the road split into two...and both looked like "tha main road":..
But after a while the descriptin matched with reality...and we chosed to walk the last bit...
Steep down towards a river...
very steep...
And the road was not suitable for "normal city cars"...
Some big stones were found near the river bank...
A guy told us how to find the hotspring...
Wow...a country road car...perfect to find nice hotsprings in taiwan...
Wow...over there we found some people...
Someone had put up some tents...
And used concrete to make some pools...
Anders found a cave...
I found a bigger one...
Bubbles in the water...
It was around 35-28 degrees in the first pool...
There was some pipes that enabled fresh river water to enter...
3or 4 pools, where 1 was outside the "tent" area...
Ander also took a swim in the cold river...
He also took some cold water to make the hotspring more fresh...
Many bubbles...
Bojun went for a walk down hill...
This was really in a djungle...
Most hotsprings are near the river bank in this area...
Far up there, and further some 20-40km, is dabajian shan...
Anders took many pictures....
Then, after some hour, we went back to the car...
Wow...some waterfall at the other side of the valley...
And some broad river...in Hsinchu that looked like a river in yilan...
We later on went to Neiwan...
I wanted to eat wild boar meat...
YEp, wild boar "or mountain pig" as its called in chinese...
They are not as big as in sweden...
I also found amilk store, from Ruishui, which i visited last week at the east coast...
They had a museum for "interesting things"...
I bought an icecream asn some liter of milk...
And went to eat some noodles...
As usual I was watcomng the maps on the wall for a long while...looking for interesting places...
Wow, nice mountains that I want to climb...
And a huge toad...
I thought this was a muffin, but it turned out to be some slime thing...
They had alot of fire crackers left since chinese new year...
Later on i took the bus to Taipei. and found a guy with both Fjällräven bag and ikea bag...thats impressive...
I went to a resturant in ximen later on...to another "italian/french" wannabee resturant...
And had pasta...
And milk tea...
And milk tea...
Later on I passed by the red house district for a kiwi tea...but it was more like an acid drink...february 2013 continues...
