E'Meishan Hotel Emeishan

... un peu le poids pour la monte de marche, ils serviront aussi d'arme, un singe decidant un jour de nous attaquer.

Nous nous nourissions de bananes sechees, d'arachides et de cake (aaaah enfer du cake). Oui, j'avoue que ce n'est pas la meilleure diete lorsqu'on veut eviter de rencontrer de trop proches les singes. Mais ce sont les meilleurs items de randonnee.

Des marches, encore des marches. J'ai tellement travaille toutes les parties de mes jambes ...

I'm exhaused, my legs are spinning like rubberbands and feel like they are being stabbed with hot pokers with each step. So was it worth it? Yes! It sure was.

After a gruelling 11 hour climb we made it to the base of the cable car, which would take us then last 200M to the summit. By this time it was getting dark, almost 7:00 pm, apart from pain there was hunger, cold and some fairly high altitude to deal with.

Emeishan, Sichuan, China heathermatthews

... if the seats around us were empty beacause of the Chinese distrust of foreigners or because we smelled too bad.

To get to Leshan it took an hour - a hop-on-hop-off trip by Chinese standards - and by the time we had settled down we were jumping off into a crusty, sweaty coachpark.

A short taxi ride brought us to our centrally located accomadation. After dumping our stuff we spent the rest of the afternoon trying to find a place ...

... on. The path continued to wind its way around the peak. Suddenly, as we rounded a bend, the Golden Summit shrine stood proud. Siloutted against the crisp morning sky yet still managing to glint a thousand hues of red and gold, a 30m tall statue of Bhudda towered over us. It's impossible to convey the grandure of the shrine, and photos hardly do it justice, but I know it's one of those things I'll never forget.

It rained constantly during the night and it was still raining when we woke at six, so we descided to sleep another half hour. We left the temple and started walking down, on the way we stopped at "hard wok cafe" and had pancakes with banana and honey for breakfast. It was the best breakfast we'd had in a long time!

From there we continued down to clear sound pavilion, a walk ...

... and restaurant. It was like they never seen a westerner as they were just staring at us and by the end of the night the had a full house sitting around probably the only tv in the place and looking at us.

We got up the next morning at stupid AM and started the rest of the step climbing to the top... It took about an hour and what a disappointment.. We were suppose to be given this lovely view ...

... and didn't hear us enter, and called for his Wife to come to his assistance and act as our 'guide'. There was so little space in this building, but so much to see. Every square inch was crammed with statues, pictures, newspaper cuttings, plates, playing cards, badges, posters; every one unique and genuine cultural relics. The term 'museum' was a loosely attached term to use for this building. These objects belonged in a museum, and Mr.Wang knew this ...

... People just love to spit here! I mean really hoyk it up! If your really lucky they'll spit into the bin but often you'll find yourself dodging the spit on the ground...yuk! Anyway the touristy stuff in Chengdu includes a wicked museum with lots of cool stuff in it from 1200 BC....Buddist temples and last but not least the pandas!....awwwww so adorable they don't even look real...so fluffy and teddy bear like... we also met some ...

... an american free breakfast) and headed to the mountain where they took our picture before admitting us to the mountain. We had a bit of a walk to the first monastery and I started to climb the stairs and then decided to take the cable car instead, which was a better choice because of all the future walking of that day and the lack of back meds. We got to there and of course there was a monkey. That little piece of hell. The monkeys are wild but depend on tourists for food ...

... or even Erawan waterfalls. I would honestly think it would rival bottled water it was that unbelievable. The bridge was surrounded by vegetetation on all sides and made for a great picture. The rest of this area was just fantastic as we journeyed through chain-linked bridges, walkways looking over crystal clear lakes, mountains, and mountain lodges. It was a great experience all the way around. Later, we had a local lunch where the highlight of this meal was that ...