What a day! Jamie had an early morning skype call and after a quick breakfast we taxied to the bus station to head out for a two and a half hour bus ride to Qiaotou, where we began our long hiking journey to the Middle Tiger Leaping Gorge. Check out the map above and follow along. We were lucky to find a driver who took us on the low road the first 12 km. From there we walked along the low road until we reached a fork in the road. We knew that they were building a new road and we could here the blast of dynamite throughout the gorge. At our fork, we thought one way (the low road) was blocked due to rubble. So we headed up. And up. And up. Eventually, rather than continuing on the switch-backing road, we decided it would be faster to take a path, which was really just a goat trail. We ended up in someone’s yard, and they managed to communicate that we had arrived at one of the mountain villages on our map, no where near where we had intended to go. However, we knew where we were and our destination. Our helpful villagers pointed up onward (and up, again) until we found a sign leading us to a hostel where we promptly sat down, exhausted, and had a pancake lunch.
Refreshed from our meal and looking at our map we now knew that it would take us about two hours to reach our original destination, so on we went. Our unplanned route took us past some beautiful waterfalls, a herd of goats, and on our way down we met a guide dog that we named Scout. Scout led us down to Tina’s, a landmark hostel for the Middle Tiger Leaping Gorge. We rested a few minutes, dropped our bags off, and continued the climb all the way to the bottom of the gorge. After a few wrong turns we made our way to the path which was 2 km almost straight down. We hurriedly enjoyed the reason for our hike before trudging our way back to Tina’s, this time 2 km straight up. We stopped several times due to utter exhaustion, with Scout faithfully checking on us and barking encouragement to continue.
We rented our room, dropped off our stuff, and headed back to the dining room where we made some new traveling friends from California and England (Avi, Chuck, and Lee). After an okay meal and some great conversation, we fell into our beds.
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