First Contact during 228 holiday:
We were very surprised to find a 7x7 giant hot spring pool at 44 degrees Celcius in Wanrong. The weird thing was that no online sources had mentioned this unique giant hot spring pool. If I had known there was a giant hot spring pool, I would have planned to camp at this big pool instead of near Molishaka, the cave hot spring. It was late and we had already set up our tent, so we decided to return to Molishaka for the night.
Second visit on Tomb Sweeping Festival
Our initial plan was to spend the 4-day holiday at Erzishan Hot Spring, but we decided to alter our plan due to a forecast of rainy weather. Wanrong was chosen as our backup plan. We weren’t able to settle on the final plan until just two days before the trip due to uncertainties about the weather. Our previous back-up plan was to camp at Shikeng Hot Spring in Kaohsiung.
The forecast said that it would rain from late afternoon on the first day throughout the following day. It was forecast to be dry on the third and the fourth day, as the weather front was headed west of Taiwan in the evening of the second day. The plan was to reach to the campsite by afternoon on the first day and camp there for the remaining three days. We would only be able to leave the valley on the fourth day after Wanli River, which is infamous for flooding, had drained for two days. Fortunately, everything went precisely as planned, and we isolated ourselves from the world at this “flood-limited” hot spring.
The first day we were a bit disappointed to find a hot spring pool that was merely 2x4 meters in size, and was just slightly warm, hardly even a “hot” spring. However, the pool expanded as the rain poured into the valley, and by the next morning the small pool had become a 6x6 behemoth. By evening it had reached 7x7 meters. The center had a depth of 1 meter and the temperature varied between 37 and 44 degrees C each day. I concluded that the underground hot water and the surrounding outcrops could only be channeled to the big pool when the water level rose and brought enough enough hot water to the big pool; the mechanism seemed very different from most other hot springs, where too much water tends to cool down the pools.
We spent whole days eating, bathing in the hot spring, playing games, sitting by the bonfire, and firefly watching. Every night, thousands of fireflies flickered across the mountainside. They sparkled with the density of stars in the sky, so we nicknamed the scenery a ‘firefly disco’. On the third day we river traced up a small creek. The sky became starry and clear that night.
The river turned dark gray and turbid on the second day, and remained like that for the rest of our time there. The water level decreased on the third and fourth day. On our way back, at one point, I needed to cross a fast current by aggressive swimming to set up a rope for the rest of the team to cross the river. I was glad my efforts in a swiftwater course had paid off and everyone could cross the river in a secure way. Even during our first visit, when the big hot spring pool was also there, we needed to use a rope once to cross the river.
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