Legend · Legend; resort from 1952
Image: Ikogosi warm spring 02.jpg — Hadassah Photostorie group, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
In Ikogosi a warm spring and a cold spring flow side by side. The legend says they are a hunter's two wives.
In a green valley at Ikogosi, in Ekiti West, something strange happens. Two streams come out of the hills close together. One is cold, like any forest stream. The other is warm, about seventy degrees Celsius where it rises, hot enough to make you pull your hand away. They meet and flow on together, and at the meeting point the water is around body heat, about thirty-seven degrees. You can stand with warm water on one side and cool water on the other.
Local people have a story to explain it. Long ago, a hunter named Aopeere Ije came from Ile-Ife. He had two wives. One, Awele, was calm and gentle. The other was hot-tempered. The wives could not get along, and the quarrel grew so bitter that in the end they turned into two streams, one cool and one hot, still running side by side for ever.
Some versions add more family members. A son, Olosun, became a warm stream too. A daughter, Oora, mocked her father; in anger her leg was cut, and she fled and became the Oora stream near Ilesa. Like many legends, it changes a little each time it is told.
The springs became a place for visitors because of an American Baptist missionary, the Reverend John S. McGee. In 1952 he went to see the springs, even though people warned him the place was sacred and dangerous. Nothing bad happened to him. He liked it so much that in 1962 the Baptists built a camp there, with a swimming pool fed by the spring.
In the 1970s the Ekiti area government took it over, and later it was turned into a resort. Today people come to swim, to rest and to look at the steaming water.
Scientists explain warm springs this way: rain soaks deep into the ground, gets heated by the hot rocks far below, and rises again through cracks. The cold spring comes from water that stays near the surface. Why the two come up so close together is a matter of the shape of the rocks underneath. The legend and the science tell the same thing in different languages: two very different waters, living side by side.
The resort at Ikogosi is now one of Ekiti State's best-known places to visit. There are chalets, a conference centre, and walking paths through the forest. The photo on this page shows the warm spring flowing through a sculpture in the woods. Visitors like to put one hand in each stream to feel the difference. Local people say the water is good for the skin and for tired bodies. Whether you believe the legend or the science, it is a strange and peaceful thing to sit by the meeting of two waters and listen.
