Misty mountain

08.05.2015

I had a couchsurfer all lined up for this weekend, two of them actually. I realized the first person was nowhere near where I wanted to go, so I had to cancel on her, mid-trip. The second one, Yulia, was in Xinxiang. I thought this mid-sized city was only 50 minutes from the mountain, but it was actually two hours. Initially, I thought it wouldn't be a problem, but once the bus started going up the mountain, and up the mountain, and up the mountain, I knew it was gonna be an ordeal to get back down. The road twisted and turned as we stopped at what seemed like every corner to let someone on or off. When we got to the foot of the mountain, the bus driver recited a long speech in Chinese and half the people got off. Usually in this scenario, you should stay on the bus, and especially this time, two nice young men explained to me that we were buying our tickets to the park on the bus, which would include transportation to the top of the mountain also. Alright I guess. Their names were Gavin and Lee. Gavin had such an incredible command of English, that I asked to follow them for the day. They said of course, and we headed straight for lunch, where we munched on mountain vegetables and tofu. We had a little bit of a problem finding a restaurant that was still open, I guess we were a little late. From there, we headed to the "Sky Ladder", but everything had become hopelessly misty and rainy. There was no longer any magnificent scenery to speak of. Before this awful weather had set in, there were fantastic red peaks and canyons. So, we strolled around in the mist, couldn't see anything and made the best of it. Gavin kept saying it was great, because "the more you see nothing, the more you can see"... Ahhh Chinese wisdom. We looked at the top of the stairs, which used to be the only way to get to Guoliangcun, until they built the scray tunnel road on the side of the mountain. There was also a gun turret that they used in some anti-Japanese movie, as well as a cute village on the edge of the cliff. On the other side of the park, there was a fantastic mountain spring in front of a gigantic wall of rock. People would shout into it supposedly to bring the water level higher. At around this point, my fantastic raincoat started leaking. I guess it's the end of another era. I'm going to have to pick up a better one at a real hiking store, rather than on the street in Vietnam. After the spring, we climbed lots and lots of stairs until we got to a cave. It was full of stalactites and was irreparably damaged by years of tourists scrambling around the rocks. It was also completely unsafe, and I can't believe it operates without any injury or wrongful death lawsuits. There's a small temple inside, maybe that's why. We climbed all the way back down through the mist, almost completely blinded by the whiteness. lee got us an electric cart ride back to the village and we attempted to find a hotel. It wasn't easy and it also wasn't cheap. Gavin and Lee chose one a little more expensive than I liked, so I left to try and get back to the city to find Yulia. I got on what I thought was the bus, but now looking back on it, I think it was a tour group's bus. They all got off halfway down the mountain, so I did too. The empty bus kept going down. I should've went with it. We waited for a few minutes and some mini buses came. I piled in with everyone else and then we got off at a hotel in the middle of nowhere. I didn't know what to do, so I just showed everyone the symbol for Yulia's address. They said it would cost 400 yuan and take two hours to get there. WHAT. OK, can I stay here? No. OK, where is another place? Some random person brought me to another hotel, where I paid 200 yuan to stay the night at a place with no heat and a tiny trickle of hot water. Screw you jerks.

Crazy tunnel road