Amy and I took a 2 day quick trip to ZhangJiaJie World Heritage Park – Photo link is below. The park is located in our Hunan Province so it was only a 4 hour bus ride away (plus an hour taxi ride). There are 5 entrances to the park so we chose a hotel within walking distance to one of them. After starting our walk to the entrance in the wrong direction (my fault) we finally got our tickets and were able to start our park adventure by 2 pm. First on our list was the cable car ride. While waiting in line we saw lots of posters for Avatar along with directions of where you could see the mountains used in the film. We got to the top – pictures from the cable car were not really good due to the fog/clouds. I doubt if they have many really clear days here – but it is still worth the trip because the scenery is so unusual and spectacular. But if you come - try the fall when it isn’t so hot. It was embarrassing how much I sweated during the “Big Mistake Hike” down. We had decided to walk down figuring gravity would help us. Big Mistake! It was a 5-6 km hike down with a surprising number of ups too. It started to rain for our last 30 minutes, which made the rail-less steps even more exciting. After 2 hours, with rubbery legs and much pain, Amy and I finally made it to the bottom. We were lucky because we had been joined and cared for by a HS girl and her mom. She had just finished her senior exams and was being rewarded with a Zhangjiajie trip. She was enjoying practicing her English and we enjoyed the company. We took tons of pictures, drank lots of water, and took very careful steps.
At 6pm we caught a short train ride down the rest of way – I wish we had had the energy to walk it – because we missed some spectacular photos but there was no way we could have made it out of the park before dark if we had tried in our hobbled condition. We even caught a taxi for our very short ride home to the hotel. We walked across the street for some really good Chinese food and then I got a massage at a local parlor with Amy going back to the room for a hot shower. Beds were exceptionally hard so when we got up early the next morning neither one of us felt very refreshed.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/katiea48/sets/72157626868270733/with/5847033926/
