Wulingyuan: 22-24 Sep 2013

At Baofeng Lake

Rach says:

Zhangjiajie was the first train station we arrived at without the luck to befriend a Chinese person going the same way. Somehow getting to our hostel in the town of Wulingyuan turned out to be a doddle - amazing how far the trusty Mandarin dictionary can get you! Hand gestures for the numbers 1-10 were another matter...you might think they were universal. Not so.


After a lie down and reviving beer, we took a short stroll up the road to the beautiful Baofeng Lake. We took a boat trip which was unusual with its stops around the lake for elaborately dressed girls on boats to sing songs to us! The Chinese tour group on our boat, with their matching visors and flag wielding leader, was also encouraged to shout 'Ni Hao' and wave like mad to other passing tourist boats!

Perilous old steps at Baofeng, now blocked off

A road with evil intentions...?

The next day we awoke to rain caused by Typhoon Usagi, which had hit the south coast. Not wanting to miss out on Wulingyuan National Park we decided to head there anyway. At the gates we were met with a hint of the disorganisation to come. HORDES of tourists waiting for buses to take them through the park...which were all sitting stationary at the other side of the bus park. Anyhow, we eventually made our way to Tianzishan cable car where another mammoth queue awaited. What followed was an "Oh dear God, what are we doing" experience. The views, or what we could see between the raindrops, were incredible, but only having been on a cable car in Austria, this was so so high!! Every time we passed a metal support, the car swung. We were rooted to our seats and Pete had his eyes closed. Then we entered the clouds. No visibility more than a metre of cable in front or behind. The rain was lashing us, the wind buffering us and howling around. All we could think was, if a cable car can fall off the cable in Switzerland, then it certainly can in China! Then...we pulled into the station. Phew. We will be staying on the ground in future.

Unfortunately what awaited us at the top was total white-out - so we had to imagine the views. Less unfortunately (depending which way you look at it, but I was hungry) there was a McDonalds! Who'd have thought it. Big Mac meal for me then :-) After all the effort of getting up there, we then decided to make our way down the mountain. Obviously it would have been too logical to make the bus stops actually link up, so we had to walk down the hill in the battering rain (luckily we had purchased ponchos) and join another huge queue for the next bus. It would become the pattern of our day. When we eventually reached the bottom via the impressive 335m high Bailong lift, the visibility and scenery was the best we had seen all day.

We saw an interesting plaque in the park: "Tourism Etiquette for Chinese Citizens", which contained such nuggets as "Don't sneeze into the face of others", "Don't go barebacked in public", "Don't chase, catch or throw stones at animals", "Never use vulgar language", "Take part in healthy entertainments. Say no to feudal superstitious activities. Stay away from pornography, gambling and drugs" and possibly our favourite "Don't try to snapshoot pictures with foreign friends without their permission". Hmmm.

On our last day we chilled in the hostel with a few beers. The rain had really set in and I had developed my second cough/cold of the trip so needed to take it easy.

Other notes...

• You have to be careful when buying lotions and potions here as many have skin-lightening properties.
• 2 Yuan for a 'Tube' journey in China (just over 20p), 1 Yuan for a city bus journey.