Thursday : sunny

I think I have bruised my hip from that sleep, that was one hard mattress. Quick pack up and checkout, we asked the receptionist the correct way to turn out of the hotel for the bus station and we were off

Ha the bus station was two buildings up the street, great not too far at all. We had plenty of time for breakfast, but again we went to McDonalds we didn't want to stray too far.

We saw an ATM across the road, and we went to use it but we were not successful the machine said both Kim and I put in the wrong pin? Hopefully there is an ATM at the next town getting a bit light.

We went back to the bus station checked in, then waited. We got personal help from the receptionist there too. She came over to us and and said our bus is here, and then she walked us to the bus. Very helpful when there is no English.

We boarder the bus for a 4-5hr trip. I was tempted to by more Maccas McDonalds staff came onto the bus selling food.

Yes, the roads in china are much better than Vietnam. Amazing what a real freeway can do. We had one stop on the journey. Not soon after we were seeing big mountains and rock formations. So hopefully the last few days of seeing the inside of a hotel room and on public transport pays off.

We arrived at our destination, and lucky us this time we arrived were the guide said we would. So we began our walk to our hotel. It looked like a nice town, very colorful and bright. Cooler here too which is a relief.

Got to the road that our hotel was on, only we couldn't find it. Not to worry we had six other hotels to choose from. Kim and I split up to go get quotes. One of Kim's hotels was the cheapest, not as cheap as last night bit we haven't got time to worry.

We had fun trying to checkin, again getting no one speaking English at reception. We managed to get a map out of them, and we went to our room and studied it.

Then we left the hotel and made our way to the bus station again to go see what we came to see. We stopped off at an ATM, this one worked thankfully. Once at the station we had to ask a few people where to go to find the right bus, but they leave every 15min so we didn't worry too much. Found it and we set off. The bus ride was suppose to take 40min but this driver was making all the stops, and dragged it out to over an hr. I even had a power nap. We got there eventually.

We came to Zhangjiajie to go to Huangshi village which is in Zhangjiajie National Park. The village is at the highest altitude in the park, and at 1048 it has a good view of the mountain range. Which has 243 peaks and over 3000 eroded Columns a concentration not seen anywhere else in the world.

We wanted to take the 2hr walking track with 3878 steps to the top but there wasn't enough time before the park closed. The other option was to take the cable car up the mountain. It was a cool way to climb, it felt like we were going vertical the whole way. The views were getting better and better the higher we got in the cable car too. We had the whole car to ourselves probably the only time that will happen in china. Maybe not such a bad thing getting there late in the arvo. At the top there was only a few tour groups also.

Once at the top all the formations looked great imagine the three sisters but as far as you can see in all directions. We were up there for an hour at least walking down all the little tracks to the different lookouts taking happy snaps. Eventually though we had to leave before we had to stay the night in the park. So down we went another car to ourselves. Then hopped in another bus back to town, much quicker on the way back.

We still had a few jobs to do back in town. We went to a hostel to book a rafting and cave tour for tomorrow, and bus tickets to the next town on Saturday. We probably should of stayed at this hostel. They had single rooms with private bathrooms for half the price where we were currently staying.

Downstairs from the hostel was a super market we picked up some food for breakfast to have in our room tomorrow. There wouldn't be enough time to go looking for food in the morning because of our early tour pickup.

Then we had dinner across the road from our hotel. It was good, no problems, they had a hand written menu in English with three meals on it. The three meals were very nice. Nice looking restaurant too. Relaxing meal with beers at that end of a good day.

We had one more job to do, it was to hand in our laundry. Our hotel doesn't do laundry though, not good! So we went back to the hostel with our dirty clothes to see if they did. They do but we have to use their machines ourselves, and they have no dryers. That's no good either our tour finishes at 5pm tomorrow and we check out the following day there's no time. I'm going to have to buy some more shirts. Lucky we are in china.

We decided to change hotels and reserved a room for tomorrow night, while we were at the hostel. To save some money.

Very tired today, lots of walking. Early pickup for the tour tomorrow and it's late night again. Will sleep well tonight.