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16 August: Walnut Garden

We were all up just before 08h00, sitting round the breakfast table awaiting a meal of muesli, yogurt and fruit for Leanne and pancakes for me - for the first time it actually cost the same as a bowl of noodle soup. This was washed down with the complementary tea one always gets in China, before we all collected our bags and went on our way. On our way out I spotted a Mandarin/English phrase book and went to ask the owner whether I could buy it to assist with our travels, she was kind enough to give it to us! The first 3 hours were relatively level paths, with some ascents and descents, but nothing like the previous day. It had been raining the day before we started hiking and there was ample water in the mountains, hence there was no shortage of waterfalls. We would on a regular basis have to cross these waterfalls which fell from lofty heights and ended as rivers obstructing our designated route. Many of the others took off the shoes to cross these rivers, but we were skilled enough to hop from stone to stone, never getting wet and making for exciting crossings! The path was a treacherous one to say the least, only wide enough to force everyone to walk in single file and drops sometimes of several meters if not hundreds of meters (at some spots) to the river flowing vigorously below.

At one such spot a water pipe had burst along the path spraying passers by with its high pressure water. Along the little pathway some beautiful mountain flowers grew, often attracting ones attention away from the road, at least not for long. After this the road started to slope downwards towards the roaring waters below. At one spot we passed an elderly lady at least in her 80's, carrying a load of grass or fodder almost her size, it was so large that when she walked she was bent over almost at a 90 degree angle, whether age or weight we would never know. We walked on for another 2 hours before arriving at Tina's guest house where we settled in for lunch. We once more ordered a beer each and a variety of dishes for everyone sitting at the table, 11 in total, the food was really great and sharing the different dishes made it all the better.

After lunch we greeted everyone, exchanged emails and headed onwards. We (us and the french couple) had decided to walk the Haba part of the mountain the next day. Just after Tina's was a huge bridge built over a ravine, there was a waterfall dropping down several hundred meters from the mountains into the ravine and flowing into the main river below. The bridge was at least 150m from the bottom and while we mused at its height, Antone was becoming one with nature adding his own liter to that of the rushing waters below.

We walked further down the tar road, before it started to rain and we waited under a house roof for it to subside, by this stage the old lady caught up with us and walked on in the rain. It was almost 2 hours later from when we had seen her on the mountain. When it subsided some we continued down another 20 minutes to Walnut garden, umbrellas in hand. We found accommodation in Chateu de Wood, unfortunately there was only one double bed so we did the gentlemanly thing of flipping a coin to see who would win the bed. We were the lucky ones and after settling in we washed out some of our clothes and hanged them out to dry. After this we headed down to the veranda overlooking the waters below. We sat there for some time drinking tea and catching up on the past days activities in our summary book and learning some Mandarin before the other two arrived. We chatted for a few hours discussing the route for tomorrow, while nibbling on sunflower seeds which the guest house gave us. When the real hunger hit us we ordered dinner after which we headed to bed around 21h30.