Dudes on Parade ... Taiwan Style

For many expat families in Taiwan, as soon as school is out, the wife will take the kids back to their home country.  As a result, many guys are left geographic bachelors for several weeks at the start or end of summer.  

Well, life gets pretty boring without the wife and kids at home, as you can imagine.  So a few of us decided to get together and do something about.  And we did.  We went on parade ... Taiwan style.

Just outside of Taipei is a huge mountain called Yangming Mountain.  It's famous for its hikes and natural hot springs.  Robb and Cameron (buds of mine from church) and I had heard about one small hike to a "hidden" hot spring.  So we tracked down some directions and started our adventure.

The directions we got were totally sketchy at first.  It was literary along the lines of "go up the mountain, then down, then pass the big tree and rocks.  You'll find a narrow road that leads down to a farm.  Go by the old house, take a left in the narrow path through the bamboo forest, then you're there."

Dubiously, we followed the directions, and it turned out that they were spot on.  See below for the old house and rice paddy farms we passed, along with some sulfur vents (another tell-tale landmark).

Here's a pic of the source of the hot springs captured from above.

After a little more hiking, and blowing past signs warning that trespassers will be fined, we made it to the hot springs.  And they were pretty cool, I'm not going to lie.  The hot springs mixed with a natural mountain stream fed by a series of small waterfalls.  Some locals used the river rocks, pipes, and sand bags to form little pools that mixed the river and spring waters in different combinations to create varying levels of hot to warm pools.  

Here's the mountain river/waterfall on the left and the piping hot spring water on the right.

The pools were pretty steamy.  So after a few minutes soaking in them, we had cool off in the frigid waterfalls.  Unfortunately, even the cold mountain water couldn't cool off these studs!

At one point, Robb found some mud and wanted to exfoliate a little on his face.  Cameron joined in quickly thereafter.  As for me, being a real man, I used the mud as Indian warrior paint.  Pretty intimidating if you ask me.

It was definitely a cool place and great hike.  I was sad Heather couldn't come with me.  But at the same time, Robb, Cameron and I also had a lot of man fun, too.