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| A pollution sun rises, coal has been burned this night |
Apr. 18, 2015
Jesse and I rose the next morning and greeted the very very smoggy day. This was a bummer, but this beautiful national scenic area is surrounded by factories so there is quite a bit of air pollution. Well done China… We got started as early as possible and walked to the closest scenic spot. As you will see from the pictures not much to see but the disappointment of Chinese air pollution. The we headed up to the Jade corridor, which turned out to be little more than a parking lot. This is when the day picked up for us. We found a Gondola to the hiking area of the park (before we had be walking on the shoulder of roads). We took a beautiful Gondola ride and then were dropped off in a walking area carved out of a cliff. We walked through there for a good hour and a half, enjoying the different sections.We then hiked up to the upper area were we had to ride two boats to get across. The first on was a cheap boat and very quick. The second one was a bit more interesting, we were trying to get across and this group of Chinese tourists came along and invited us onto their boat. For us the ride was free, which was pretty amazing. From their conversations they were just happy to have two foreigners sitting with them. Then at the end I revealed that we did in fact speak Chinese and they were all embarrassed that we could understand.
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| Roadside flower |
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| Water running down the cliff would be a common sight throughout the day |
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| A famous view totally obstructed by air pollution. |
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| To the Battlements! |
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| Battlements constructed on the side of a cliff |
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| I sadly did not get to lay down with this Buddha |
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| New Chinese Friends! |
The second half of the day was a bit more slow paced, it involved a lot of road walking. There are not paths that connect the sites in the park. Instead you are expected to hire a car wherever you want to go. This gets expensive quickly, so Jesse and I just did road walking which confused people. They believed that everything was extremely far away and it would take far too long to reach things. Most things in the park were only a few kilometers away and about 30 minute walk. We went to the temple in the park, which also had a scenic viewing platform. The temple was fairly large and looked like it had living quarters. Jesse and I ate lunch there and enjoyed the calm atmosphere. We were there around an hour then head down the road. We made it back to the Jade corridor, and we took the other scenic Gondola. The Gondola gave us and idea of how large the park is. Most of it is inaccessible to people but for the air I could see the rolling hills of green. For the first time, the name made sense. We then headed out of the station into the next hiking area. The area was beautiful, following a small creek back into the mountains. On the hike we met this older German gentleman and his wife. We spoke to them for a short while (He immediately knew I studied in Taiwan) and then they offered us a ride back to Chengdu in their car! Which was amazing, it made our lives so much easier for the following day. We parted ways after the hike, after exchanging numbers, and head back down the road. By this point it was getting fairly close to dinner time, so we meandered our way back to the hotel. Marveling, once more, about the short distances between areas. We arrived back at our hotel, and then showered, fed ourselves. We had been hiking for about 9 hours. It was a great time and much easier to express in pictures than in words. We ended falling asleep around 8pm (we are hard core college students…).
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| Viewing platform in the temple |
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| Bamboo Sea... |
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