BUS DAY!

We woke up about 7 and felt pretty well rested. We checked out and took a taxi to the bus station where we got our tickets and sat down for a quick breakfast of hardboiled eggs, fried noodles, and fried bread. I continue to be surprised at the heavy breakfast food here. It seems that meals here are more focused on getting the nutrients you need, and then filling up on stables like rice or noodles.

We got on the bus and spent an hour driving around the city picking up more people. It was quite annoying and made it difficult to sleep. People were very loud and shouting into their cell phones, which got to be obnoxious.

We stopped for lunch and paid 15 yuan for a plate of 4 dishes and rice. It wasn’t great, but filled us for the rest of the ride.

It’s amazing we were able to entertain ourselves for the 10 hour trip. I slept some in the beginning, journaled, read my book, beat Clark at Scrabble, and watched the mountain scenery. As we got closer, the mountains grew and the road started winding around. There was a pretty river and lots of tiered crops.

They were building an expressway, but it wasn’t completed yet. That would have made our trip much faster!

We arrived at the foot of Yellow Mountain (Huangshan) and had dinner around 6. Dinner was good with cucumbers, potatos, kungpao chicken (HOT!) fragrant pork, tofu and mushrooms, and spinach. We filled up on rice, anticipating a 3 hour hike up the mountain. We finished dinner and repacked our bags as Peter asked questions and bargained a taxi ride. Everyone was giving us different information and it seemed like they were lying in order to get our business at their hotels. They were telling us the gate was closed and that we wouldn’t be able to hike at night as we had planned. We finally decided to just go see for ourselves.

We took a taxi there and the gate was open. We searched around for the path, but couldn’t find it. We looked at map but it was unclear where we should start climbing. Our taxi driver was of no help. We decided to take our bags and just walk around until we found the path, but then a woman got involved saying that we couldn’t. She cited things like bad weather (we could see lots of stars), bugs (we had bug spray), darkness (we had flashlights), and finally ended with “it’s just against the rules.” The lady threatened to call someone and finally did as we started walking.

Slowly people came out one at a time, including 2 guards. Peter continued to argue until eventually there were about 10 people surrounding him, seemingly telling us more lies. They said we could stay in a dorm room there, but when we asked to see it, they said the lady with the key had gone home for the night. The rest of us felt helpless in that we couldn’t understand anything or help Peter at all. About an hour after we had arrived, we finally decided to take our taxi back down and stay in a hotel.

Ironically, they said we could come back at 3:30 to begin our climb, so we could see the sunrise. The hotel was grungy, the sheets were full of holes, and the window screen too. We got 2 doubles for 20 yuan for each person, which was cheap.