RS's travels: Trying not to throw up

I might be too tired to write this post but I will try to cover everything from today.

After getting about 4 hours of sleep last night, we awoke and actually went down to breakfast. We had some eggs. Then we finished getting ready for a hike today that we were told was like the grand canyon, in fact the place is called the Enshi Grand Canyon. We were supposed to leave the hotel at 8am this morning, but I think that everyone was so tired this morning that we ended up leaving at 9am instead. We boarded a mini bus and spent the next 2 hours driving up the longest, windiest road I’ve ever been on (much windier than the Amalfi coast!). We also climbed over 2000 feet in the bus. I’m still not used to the driving and the honking- drivers honk when they want people and other cars to move out of their way as they drive, and I am always holding on for dear life when we are in cars and buses. Two hours later, we arrive at a bus area where we are dropped off, given tickets and get onto a line to take another bus to the canyon. I feel like this whole trip is more traveling and sitting on buses, trains, planes, cars and etc than actually doing anything, but I guess it just shows you need to move places to see things! We got onto the second bus and drove up another tiny windy road (by the way, I forgot to mention that this road is quite narrow and is really a one lane road, but for two way traffic) until we reach an area where the bus just pulls over and lets us out. Our hike began here.

This hike is like no other hike that I’ve ever been on. There was no dirt, no signs, no usual hiking things. It was all concrete pathways and steps. In fact, 7000 steps to be exact and then the walkways don’t count. Our pedometers are reading over 12, 000 steps for today! The trail was very steep up and down and was 7.5 kilometers long. It took us about 6 hours to hike. In the middle of the hike we were very close to the top of the mountain/canyon and we stopped for lunch. Usually I don’t like to eat a large meal while I’m in the middle of a strenuous hike, but we had no choice and we were escorted into a 4 star restaurant in the middle of the mountain. The food gets up there by horses, which is really cool. And the meal was delicious.

After digesting our food for not long enough (we have no idea how the Chinese scarf down a meal in 10 minutes and then get up from the table) we got up and continued our hike. Another 3 hours later, with steep cliffs and lots of steps, we finally made it down to the bottom of the trail.

At the bottom while we were waiting for the last of our crew to come down, mom and I dad learned a little Tai Chi from one of our colleagues.

Then we got back on the second bus and it took us down to our original bus. We were running late at this point and the bus driver drove pretty quickly down the canyon and back to the hotel. On the bus one of the guys on our tour had bought some green tea flavored oreos at the Walmart in Yichang and he passed them out to everyone. I did take one as I’m craving a little bit of chocolate since I haven’t had any in a long time. They were pretty disgusting and there is no need to ever buy that flavor of oreo again. We got to the hotel at 7:15pm and dad had to rush to get ready because he was told in the bus on the way back that he had to give a lecture to over 100 medical students and physicians at the hospital in Enshi. He was already exhausted after the hike, so he was a bit nervous about this. Luckily, he got ready somewhat quickly and was out the door to his lecture. While he was giving his lecture, mom and I went to dinner with our hosts here in Enshi. The rest of the group went to dinner as well and it was the largest table I’ve ever eaten at. The food was pretty good too as this region the food is very spicey. Most of our group was still dressed in the clothing we hiked in all day long, but a fewmembers were dressed in nice clothing- another example of absolutely no communication. We could have easily quickly put something nice to wear on, but no one said anything.