Zhangjiajie: The Avatar Mountains

I know I just posted about vacation to Sanya, but it was vacation time again! This time we went to Zhangjiajie, a.k.a. the Avatar mountains. They're called this because some of the landscapes from the Avatar movie (blue people, not air bender) was based off of these mountains. And they are AMAZING!

Thursday, April 3rd

After we finished teaching this day we went back to our apartments to grab our stuff and head to the train station. We had to take a train to Guangzhou and then catch an overnight train to Zhangjiajie. We had bad luck though and our first bus to the train station drove super slow (buses are usually scary fast). We were then cutting it close so we opted for a taxi. But since there were 9 of us, we had to take 3 taxis.

The first two taxis made it to the station on time (with some running involved) but when Chrissy and I arrived in the third, the train was gone. Luckily trains leave for Guangzhou regularly, and even more lucky we were able to change our tickets at no additional cost. Our new tickets were for a train 40 min. after the original and we briefly considered sneaking onto an earlier train. At that point, a station worker came over, looked at our tickets, and then told us to get on the earlier train. So Chrissy and I got on and tried not to look suspicious. We made it to Guangzhou without further incident, found the rest of the group and took a moment to breathe knowing that everyone was alright.

Then we took the metro to the other train station and got on our 14 hour train. We took hard seats again, but I think everyone agreed that this one was much better. I know I slept much better. Noor was out almost the entire time. We played some games and chatted. At one point a man walked by with a box of chicks chirping away.

End of the ride when most people had gotten off
and we could spread out :)

Friday, April 4th

We arrived in Zhangjiajie city in the morning and then had to take a 45 minute bus to our hostel. It was an odd little bus that looked more like a van. We paid the fare half way through when we stopped and picked up a lady who collected the money and then got off a few stops later.

We found our hostel and checked and and headed off to our first destination. This involved more buses.

The first place we went was the Zhangjiajie National Forest. When we tried to take a group photo out front, the man assumed we wanted to take a picture with him. While it's definitely a tourist spot, the percentage of foreigners was much smaller here than it has been in other places.

The weather was sunny this day and the mountains were beautiful! We took a short bus ride up to the gondola, and then took that to the top of the mountain (where we found an expensive McDonalds...) From here we hiked around a bit, enjoying the scenery. There were vendors selling tourist stuff all over the place.

Then we took a bus to another location on the mountain. We ended up on the same bus as a Korean tour group this time. When I said thank you in Chinese to one of them they were sure to tell us they were Korean. So I said one of the few Korean words I know and they understood me- I felt very proud :)

We looked at more amazing mountains, went up a pagoda and then decided to hike back down.

This took us about 2 hours and involved way too many stairs. American hiking along a dirt path is much better than uneven, falling apart, old stone stairs. But again, the scenery was beautiful and we took several photo stops. Though there were a weird number of creepy, abandoned buildings along the way...

Nearing the end. We still look pretty good :)

Saturday, April 5th

The next day, feeling sore, we went to Tianmen Mountain park. This park is pretty much all at the top of the mountain. To get there, we took a 30 min. gondola ride all the way up. We met a group of Chinese friends waiting in line and then they kept popping up randomly throughout the day.

We even made it onto their social media :)

There's a walkway built into the side of the mountain that goes all the way around. We walked along this for a while, and at one point it turns into a glass walkway over the cliff.

Chrissy had the great idea to take a picture with our legs hanging over the edge. The Asians thought we were crazy, but we got an awesome photo. But when Abby stood up to switch places, her camera fell out of her pocket and tumbled right off the mountain. It was like a scene out of a movie as we all watched in silence as it fell end over end, hit a ledge and burst into pieces. Abby took it all very well and spent the rest of the trip making dead camera jokes :)

Moments before it happened.

One of the things to see at the top of this mountain is a large Buddhist temple complex. So of course we hiked up to it.

As we made our way down from the temple, Noor tripped over a crack in the walkway and sprained her ankle. Since we were pretty much done with that part of the mountain anyways, we started our way down with her. Since she couldn't really walk on her foot, we took turns helping her the whole way. While lots of people stared at us, no one ever offered to help. We finally made it back to the gondola and of course there was a huge line. At this point thankfully the guards let us all skip the giant line and get in the gondola.

Look at Noor, she's such a trooper :)

Before going all the way down the mountain though we stopped off at the Stairway to Heaven. It's basically 999 stairs up the mountain to a cool archway. But it was awesome! We all yelled 'I love China!' off the top. By this time, it had started to rain a little, and going down was a little scary as half the steps were smaller than my foot and wet. Noor waited for us at the bottom.

The area where it looks like it levels
out? False. The stairs just change.

Made it to the top!

Then we made it back to the gondola to finish going down. This time they only let Noor and two other people skip the line, so the rest of us waited. It took so long though that they put us on a bus to go down instead to make sure we got out before the park closed. But it was still late enough that we missed the last bus back to our hostel and we had to take a taxi.

Sunday, April 6th

While Noor and Lindsey stayed at the hostel, the rest of us went back to Zhangjiajie National Forest because our tickets were good for three days. Our main goal for the day was to see monkeys, and we succeeded. And of course none of us could resist feeding the cute little things :) Video on Facebook.

In addition to the monkeys, the area was beautiful.

At 5:00 we caught our overnight train to go back to Guangzhou. This time we got sleepers, which meant we each had a bunk bed all to ourselves. Heaven! We also had some pretty cool neighbors from Spain that we chatted with for a while. We got home late Monday morning and prepped for going back to school.