Day 5 – “What is this ‘happy’ you speak of?”

After a blissful night’s sleep on top of the mountain and banana pancakes for breakfast, we decided to hit the trail.  But first we needed to admire the ‘sunrise.’  Sunrise here is much later than in eastern China (because all of China is one timezone. Don’t ask.)

View from our hostel. 🙂 It was awesome!

For a while the trail was a slow descent with beautiful views.  The views really kept getting better.  The trail creeped around the mountain, always with the sheer drop to the river on the right.  This day was harder for me just because of the fear of heights thing…  Around each corner there were new surprises.  One particular stretch held a special challenge for me.

Yes, this is a waterfall cutting right through the trail.

So, I had two options: I could walk on the very edge where there was about a 6-inch wide dry patch, or I could get my feet a little wet and stay away from the edge. (do you see the water cascading over the edge...yikes!) My shoes got a little wet. 🙂

I did eventually make it past the waterfall (which was my favorite and least favorite part) and we continued on.  The people at the hostel told us that it would take about two hours to reach the low road (the road for cars driving through the gorge).  I kept thinking in my head, “we are really high. How in the world are we going to reach the road in such a short distance and such a short time?”  Ummm…let’s go STRAIGHT DOWN!  Shortly after the waterfall there were the second 28 bends (not actually what they were called but basically straight down rock climbing–with a little bit of back and forth.)  I hated this part.  I was definitely using my hands more.  And I was developing a rather large blister near my right big toe. 

After our 1.5 hour descent (yep, it was actually quicker) we stopped along the road to wait for two of our travel buddies.  We decided that we would leave them a note at the guesthouse and continue down the road another 30 minutes to the place where we planned to eat lunch.  This place is known for it’s “Happy Tea.”  Actually, it’s not really ‘known’ because the owner would probably be in Chinese jail somewhere.  Some of my companions wanted to eat there so they could try happy tea.  I opted out of “happy tea” because, believe it or not, I don’t actually want to be deported.  On the menu you could add “happy” to anything for 6元. That’s about $1.  It was crazy.  It was here that we rented a minibus back to Qiaotou.  Funny–it only took about an hour to drive through the gorge! 

Upon returning to Qiaotou, we said goodbye to two friends who were continuing on to Shangri-la.  The rest of us were heading back to Lijiang to enjoy Mama Naxi’s family meal at one of the hostels. The meal was delicious and the company was great!  I opted out of the after-supper-bar-hopping idea in favor of some good sleep!  Definitely a wise choice! 🙂 

This was actually taken during the hike on the first day. 🙂 This was day three of getting sunburned. The river was beautiful!