Last weekend we went on a 3 day holiday with our good friend, Dana, who is a TCM student at the hospital here. We took a 3 hour train ride to Zhangjiajie. This park is a UNESCO geopark, noted for it’s peculiar limestone spires amidst sub-tropical forest home to 1000’s of rare species of flora. It is these spires that inspired James Cameron’s vision of hanging mountains on the moon Pandora in his movie, Avatar.
On the trip there, we were able to buy tickets in the deluxe cabins of the train, pretty comfy.
(Maddie likes to make crazy faces in photos these days)

We arrived at the train station refreshed and ready to barter. We talked the taxi drivers down from 110 Y to 60 Y. It is a winding road up into the mountains and the taxi drivers do it as fast as possible so that they can return quickly to get more fares. There are incredibly long tunnels through the mountains, several of them just over 2kms long. Contrary to the posted signage, this is long enough for cars, taxis and buses to start passing each other in the tunnel, not for the faint of heart!
We arrived at our destination safely and checked into our hotel. We found a great little street BBQ to have some dinner and went to sleep in anticipation for what our views would be like the next day.
After a delicious Chinese/Western breakfast (with…butter!!) we headed off to the park at the crack of 10:30. Quickly bypassing both the giant LCD screen showing bits of the movie Avatar and the persistent locals who would like to be your guides lurking at the park gate, we began our day. Our first views of the towering peaks above us were awe-inspiring.

We took the ‘Golden Whip Stream’ trail, which is the most popular in the park, somewhat busy but not overly so. It is a leisurely 7km walk along a paved pathway beside the Golden Whip Stream.

There were many scenic spots along the way…


Simon, Dana, and Maddie in the backpack decided to go up another trail for a quick look around. Anticipating lots of stairs, Emily and I continued ahead along the easy trail for a while. When they returned to us they were very excited and bursting with adrenaline. It seems they had encountered a group of monkeys, who quietly watched them and checked them out from afar.

A large male came to the forefront for a better look. Eventually the monkeys realised that they were not going to be fed, or they were simply on display to these strange humans. Here is the photo Dana took a moment before all of the monkeys turned to chase them and Simon began to take flight…

Meanwhile, Emily and I enjoyed a quiet moment in the park just off the main trail.

The hike took a little longer than expected so we opted to go up the ‘Bailong Elevator’ instead of trying to make it across the park to one of the gondolas (there are 2). The Chinese have constructed this elevator both inside and outside one of the spires. It is the world’s tallest glass outdoor elevator at 1070 ft.

The view at the top was fabulous, albeit a little scary for me. We totally lucked out in that the clouds swept in only moments after this photo was taken. That was the end of the view for that afternoon.

We did not know at the time that this elevator is actually rather controversial, and the Chinese went ahead and installed it without the OK from UNESCO and the necessary environmental studies done beforehand. We are not surprised. The future of this elevator is still uncertain.
After our long and fulfilling day at the park we took one of the park buses back to the entrance, only it was the east entrance in a town called Wulingyuan and not the south, where we began. I still cannot understand how there is not a bus back to our entrance after most people just walked the 7km trail that we did. How do they all get back? Maybe we were too late. Two city buses later, with the aid of some kind Chinese people who spoke a tiny bit of English and we arrived back in Zhangjiajie village. We have been fortunate; whenever we have been really stuck we seem to find one person who can help us out with the language.
We met a nice German couple on one of these buses and Dana was very glad to be able to speak in her mother tongue for a few hours as we all had dinner together.
Day 2…