I decided to participate in the Gold Panning Experience recommended by the tourist assistant at the Tourist Office of the Gold Ecological Park. It was one of the two paid attractions in the park, the other is the Tunnel Experience.
I arrived early at the Gold Ecological Park so I was able to check out the area before the museums inside the Park. After I visited the Prince's Chalet, I immediately went to the stairs leading to the Gold Ecological Museum. If you exit the Prince's Chalet, it is on the far left side. Although I know the place having seen it during my stroll earlier, I was not aware of the number of steps I should climb. I was huffing when I reached the top. But as soon as I saw the view, all the weariness went away.
The first you'd notice is probably the wooden platform up ahead with a small train track for loading cargo. There's a wooden crate-like carriages for visitors to hop on for taking pictures. These are the ones the miners used to transport cargo. To the right is a mountain with ragged edges and to the left is an amazing view of the mountains and of the town. Up ahead, you can see a foot bridge and the Teapot Mountain, and of course, the Museum.
I was surprised to see a lot of young people, teenage kids, loitering around the area waiting. I think they're on a vacation of some sorts and they seem to be classmates or relatives from the US or something. Like a school trip? Anyway, they were waiting for the Gold Panning Experience to start, too.
I bought a ticket at the ticket counter. It costs just NTD 100.00 (Php 160.00), and it was all worth it. Where else can you experience gold panning?
This is the ticket counter.
The gold panning experience is conducted on the topmost floor.
You can see one of the guides going down from the gold panning floor.
Then it was time for our gold panning experience. We were led to the uppermost floor and were asked to pick a seat. The seat was wooden, the ones used when washing clothes by hand. And in front of the seats were two separate concrete boxes with brown water. There were at lest 3 or 4 instructors or guides for the gold panning experience, but the instructions were in Chinese. I don't understand Chinese, but luckily, the large group of teenage kids some of their chaperones had a translator with them, so I listened to their translator for directions! So lucky! Also, one of the guides helped me in gold panning because she knew I don't speak Chinese, so she gave me particular importance. Yay!
Gold panning is not easy, and finding the gold specks takes a lot of time. We only had a small, metal saucer where our prepared small rocks, pebbles and sand to find gold specks but it you need patience and it hurts the back. But once you see the gold dust glittering in the small bottles they provided, you'll feel really, really happy and proud of your achievement.
These are the steps in gold panning:
1. Dip the small plate into the water; mix the water and the particles then throw away the rocks back into the water.
2. Repeat the dipping and the throwing of rocks until you have no more rocks in your plate.
3. Fill the plate with water, and swirl the plate around until only the lightest particles remain in the center. Throw the water and the sand out.
4. Repeat the step until you can see the gold specks and there's only a little of the sand left.
5. Carefully transfer the sand and the gold specks from the plate to the small bottle.
6. Go to the faucet and fill the bottle with clean water until the water becomes clear. Cap it off.
7. Test if you got a lot of gold specks (lucky) or not. Swirl the contents of the bottle until the sand settles on the bottom. Lift the bottle towards the light and squeal when you see the gold specks settled on the bottom of the bottle.
After the gold panning experience, I wandered around just for a bit, taking pictures everywhere. To my utter delight, I heard someone speaking in Filipino; they're a family of Filipino-Chinese. If they didn't speak Filipino, I would not have known they're Pinoys. I asked the mother if they could kindly take my photos, and the husband did! I was so happy!
If I was not alone, I would have explored the area more. There are a lot to see at the Gold Ecological Park. There was one place I really wanted to go to, the Shinto Shrine, but I didn't know where it was. It was only now that I realized that it's just some 600 meters away from the Gold Ecological Museum, and only after I noticed in one of my photos the top structure of a Shinto Shrine. Oh well, even if I had known, I'd probably not go there because I checked the stone stairs leading to the Shinto shrine but I thought that it was off limits because there were metal posts and there were no people climbing the steps. Besides, I was alone and I am clumsy. If I slip and fall down the stairs, no one would know, unless someone goes to the shrine.
See the arrow? That's the Shinto Shrine.
It's 600m from the stairs.
A miner's lunch in this eatery.
It was still closed but it opened by lunchtime.
Find the Teapot Mountain.
The marker says its 4000 m away.
Guess what this is.
And, I didn't get into the tunnel because I didn't see anyone lined up for the tunnel experience. I also forgot to go to the Gold Ecological Museum where the huge gold bar is. Yup, I am really a total loser to forget all the important things.
