CHINA: Huangshan day 3

We woke up at 6:30am after a good rest. To be honest I was a bit scared to sleep because of the car accident video I watched. I was terrified that the images would pop up in my dreams, but thankfully it didn't. 

We got our stuff ready and went downstairs for breakfast. It was an all you can eat and we had a big bowl of porridge with condiments. They like to eat a lot of pickled things which I love. We also had little sponge cakes, eggs and mantou. Sherry ate a lot of mantou that she was embarrassed to ask for more HAHA! It was a simple but nice breakfast :) 

Then our driver sent us to the station where we took a bus up the mountain. You aren't allowed to drive up the mountain yourself, you can only take a special bus. There were a lot of people lining up but we got there pretty quickly. The ride up the mountain was great, and though the roads were windy, our speedy gonzales bus driver was in total control. 

We took the cable car up the mountain first. It was really fun because it went quite fast.

When we got off we finally started our hike :D! Sherry was pretty good at navigating and there were lots of signs everywhere.  

This was the direction we walked! I was SUPER THANKFUL (words cannot express) for the hotel staff who taught us how to walk the mountain. We walked anticlockwise because it meant we were walking downhill majority of the time. I was already struggling to climb in this direction, and I seriously cannot imagine walking the other way. It would be DEATH. We began our adventure on the Eastern steps. 

Starting with the Yungu cableway, we headed for the Beginning-to-believe Peak. It was about 8-10 degrees Celcius at the top, but my windproof jacket kept me warm. All the little sun icons are perfect spots for viewing the sunrise/sunset.  The top of the mountains looked like this: 

There were lots of hotels on the mountain

Then we headed to the Refreshing terrace, Stone monkey watching the sea and Lion peak. I think this stretch was one of my favourite areas :) The sea of clouds was sooo beautiful!! 

After spending some time in those viewing areas, we aimed to get to our hotel. I was tired, so the thought of lying down in my hotel was my main motivation. We were still carrying our clothes and others necessities and I was pretty hungry even though I snacked along the way. It was a bit confusing to get to our hotel, but we eventually go to Baiyun Hotel :) It was a 4 star hotel and we got a private room, woohoo!

The hotel had a buffet lunch, it was really delicious!! I lovveee Huangshan food!

We were surprised to see potato smileys in the buffet :D!

A tourist guide sat down next to us, and like everyone else, he was super surprised that we were speaking English. He joined our conversation and we found out he does tours in Japan as well :)! It was really fun talking to him, his English was pretty good. Sherry stuffed herself silly, so we rested a bit before starting our afternoon hike. 

Because the hotels are on top of the mountain, people have to carry everything up. It was pretty incredible to watch these people carry heavy items. This mean that prices were more expensive, but I totally reckon it was worth staying on top of the mountain ^^

There were lots and lots of old Chinese people (hardly any foreign tourists) which surprised me. They provided a service for carrying people 2km for $20. 2km is quite a far way on a staircase, and it was intriguing to watch haha :P

The afternoon was much better because I put down my bag and had a raincoat. Sherry continued with her bag and walked the Xihai Grand Canyon. This area isn't open all times of the year, so we were super excited that it was open ^^! By the way, Oct 1-8 is China's national holiday where everyone in the country has leave. I was gobsmacked at photos my friend showed me of tourists areas during this time. Thank God we went after, otherwise we would've been crushed by the crowds! 

More mountain fun

This was the flying-over rock spot I think. 

My absolute favourite walk was the 1st/2nd ring of the Xihai Grand Canyon. I took this image off the internet, this staircase along the mountain side was THE BEST! 

I took some videos, but I'll upload them when I learn how to edit...

At the end of the ring walk we took the Track rail cableway from the Bottom station to Tianhai station. Then we went to the turtle peak ^^

I was absolutely pooped at the end of the day, but Sherry was still energetic. I collapsed on my bed because my calves were so worn out. Our hotel was pretty nice and then it soon got dark and super foggy, so we watched TV. There was an awesome variety program that did experiments. The contestants had to choose the right answer based on their knowledge and logic. The second program was about comics and it was in English :) It brought back a lot of memories from Astrix and Obelix, Tintin and Astro boy! I will forever laugh at Sherry dancing to Astro boy :P 

After that I dragged myself out of bed because I was starving. The hotel provided us these massive jackets because it gets quite cold at night. We shared a big bowl of noodles and then I slept like a log.