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Published: August 6th 2007
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Rock stars
We thought we would hide by sneaking up to the 3rd floor of this bar on the square....i guess some people noticed us. With Mary off in Toyko and Eli and Jaime in Borneo, I was forced to attack China's tiger leaping gorge with some new travel pals. Having spent my time in Dali half independent and half with my new English friends Emily and Katherine (both english teachers in Guangzhou, so there were hours of competing in memorable chinese stories....emily won with the story of rats running over her head just before going to bed). Moving on to Lijiang meant the possibility of meeting up with several CTLC teachers who were also planning on making Yunnan their favorite Chinese province.
After a few days for wandering around Lijiang's crowded, twisted cobblestone streets, I met up with Megan and Jen at Mama Naxi's. Mama is guardian of all thing backpacker in Lijiang, you call her when she arrives and she comes in picks you up, tucks you in and makes sure you brush your teeth each night before she sends you off to hike the gorge. She is a firecracker....small, colorful, and loud. The combination of her limited in english and our nonexistent chinese makes for some interesting conversations....each one unique and completely confusing but always ending in an "ok, mama take care
Miracles do come true
Who knew all you had to do was write it on these little pieces of wood...i guess just the chinese.. of you!"
Mama's lackeys shuttled us down the winding roads into the depths of the gorge on Friday morning and let the hiking begin. Most people can do the hike in two days, one night, but Megan and I had plenty of time (thanks to a few flight changes and an "oops, was I supposed to teach today?") so we planned on 4 days and 3 nights in the gorge.
The first hour was a spent mostly telling the man with the horse that we wouldn't be needing the horse, however, as the slight incline continued to become more pronounced, I think we were all secretly hoping he would continue to follow as a just in case, and of course he did.
We made it to the first guesthouse, a bit more tired than we expected and decided to make camp in the hostel's dorm room because the next portion was the hardest and Jenn, another teacher we were traveling with, didn't have enough time to make the entire hike, and this guesthouse would allow her to return easily to Lijiang. Since the hiking was done for the day and it was only 3pm and with no
dvd's, internet or cell phone reception, we set off to explore the neighboring homes. The gorge is full of the Naxi people, one of the many Chinese minority groups. The Naxi people were originally a matrilineal people and you can still see the woman dominance today as most businesses and business was conducted by the Naxi women. We spent the afternoon on stools and exchanging bad chinese, ours because we don't really study and hers because she had no teeth and mandarin is not her originally language. The Naxi people, decedents from the Himalayas, created their own language, both spoken and written, which however is being spoken less and less. She gave us sunflower seeds and the prettiest smile and a offer to sit with her on the porch and play with her dog. This was the kind of interactions that brought my to China. I was glad that megan and jen were better at chinese, because otherwise it would have been just a bunch of smiles.
After enough sunflower seeds and a lack of further questions to ask, we headed back to the guesthouse and talked the girls who ran the house to let megan and I cook.
Chinese (really) old music and musicans
These instruments were from before the cultural revolution when all art and cultural was destroyed...some of the musicians buried their instruments to save them. These instruments were from before the cultural revolution when all art and cultural was destroyed...some of the musicians buried their instruments to save them.
The result was lots of giggles on both sides....them at our mistakes and us at our lack of chinese cooking skills.....For a moment I thought we might be cooking for other guests, but I think the girls were smart enough, and I realized we were just cooking our meal, which turned out to be not too bad.
The next morning we were off to a late start....no reason to rush a beautiful secenry, we said our good-byes to our new friends and old...jen was heading back to Lijiang, while Megan and I were to attack the dreadful 28 bends. We took our time, stopping every third bend, regardless if it was only a few feet long and at the top we were rewarded with a beautiful view and some expensive water available for purchase. The rest of the day was mostly downhill and megan and I quickly concienved ourselves that the "28" was not even really that bad.... We settled in for night 2 at the halfway guesthouse....the most popular of guesthouse because of
the "famous lou with a view". It in fact did have the best view I have ever seen from a bathroom, but because of the expansion of the guesthouse...that view allowed your bottom to be seen by all those staying in the newly built dorms just down hill from the lou....not the best of planning, i guess.
Displeased with our service and stay at Halfway house (not only did they not let us cook our own meals, but we had to ask four times for a menu that we never got. We packed up our packs and headed over to the neighboring five fingers guest house where we were welcomed eagerly by Daisy. We had heard rave reviews about the five fingers, but were trying to avoid a fellow trekker who we had seemed to meet at have turn. Not that he wasn't nice, just at little eccentric.....he would look at the guestbook sign in "crunch the numbers" on what country had the most represented.....i just didn't have my usually set of follow-up questions for him as I could never really tell where his mind was heading. Daisy fell in love with us immediately and broke out the testimonial
book and photo album so we could see both.
After a spectacular breakfast of chocolate banana pancakes we headed for another down hill day. Once we got down to the road it was another hour and a half hike down to the river. This was optional and since most of the day had been void of challenging, we opted to do it. I wish I could have said it was rewarding or definitely worth it.....But the hiked down was annoying because we had been going downhill all day and it began to hurt my legs as well as megans. And, this sounds horrible, but there were too many chinese people. We had spent the last two days in the quiet only speaking when we had something to say, letting nature do the talking, we rarely ran into others who we had to share the photograph
with, so this was quite disappointing. We were surrounded by about 30 people, hungry for lunch that was hours late and had a rough hike ahead of us. There was no room to escape and just soak your feet in the cold water without having someone either point at you or ask to take
their picture with you. We only stayed for about 30 mins, refilled on water and crackers and headed up....straight up that is. We opted for what we thought was the fastest accent out of the gorge, which included a 30 foot ladder up the side of the cliff. Let me just say....it sucked...all 1 hour and 10 mins of it. The brochure said it would take 40 mins. I was tired by 6 minutes, and dead at 10 mins. I think if I had been alone, I wouldn't have finished, but Megan was a tough chick and kept going, not letting me fall too far behind, but far enough ahead to push me....
We made it to the last guesthouse, Sean's, only moments before our teacher friends from Shenzhen arrived. They missed the hike down the gorge and we couldn't quite, either by exhaustion or lack of being impressed, find reasons to tell them to go back. We spent the evening watching the sun set, sipping beers, feeling up on good food, sharing stories of the gorge, and just letting the memories seep in....
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