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As you can see from the picture, the scenery on the way up and from the top of Hainan’s highest mountain, Wuzhishan, is pretty amazing. There is just one thin path (of sorts) cutting through the rainforest from the bottom to the 1800m peak, which took us about four hours of steady hiking and climbing. This is harder work than it sounds, as the mountain gets steeper and steeper until you are literally climbing on all fours up tree roots like ladders.
The very peak is just a small clearing about the size of a bedroom, with steep drops on all four sides, and there is a very strange feeling up there. For one, you are just slightly above the clouds, which feels a bit like being in a very small heaven as you can’t see further than the clearing you are standing on. For another, it is completely silent as you are miles above civilisation. For another, it is odd being on the top of a mountain that is not cold and covered in snow. The temperature up there was still high enough to make you sweat, and there were lush plants growing all around. It’s wierd to
have climbed above the clouds and still find bugs and plants living a life up there just like they do lower down. Surreal is definitely the word to describe the atmosphere up there.
We made a soft floor from plants and pitched a tent on it, waking up early to see the sunrise through the clouds.
We then spotted a third peak and headed off through untrampled rainforest and fog to reach it. That peak was overgrown by plants, so we climbed a tree, looking down on the canopy and 360 degree views faling down on all sides.
Somehow, and we still can’t work out how, the silence in the night was broken by the unmistakable sound of terrible karaoke drifting up from the valley. Above the clouds it felt like heaven, but still sounded like China.
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