Baofeng Lake and Avatar

cont. Zhangjiajie, Hunan, China--2011

Day 5

Again we had fog for the day. Actually for the whole trip. This morning the bus took us to Baofeng Lake, which is up in the mountains. Here we walked from the parking lot to the stairways that took us up to where the lake is.

I would not suggest anyone who have leg problems to go on this hike. But they do have sedan which you can hire. They will carry you up to the lake. It was indeed a difficult hike for us. That's the yellow sedan that was carrying some tourist.

Keep going!

...and going!

Finally we got to sit down...inside a covered boat. How nice!

The scenery was just amazing. Imagine how beautiful it would have been if it was a nice day.

Young girl and young man singing love songs to each other from the boats.

Our local guides.

Now, we have to walk back down from the other side of the mountain. Walking down was much easier and the view much prettier.

There's a waterfall in the background.

Afterwards we went to another part of the park. We were basically rained in here, not much pictures taken.

Here we took the little train to go inside the park. We were suppose to see more beautiful views, like the "10-mile gallery", but we really couldn't see much with this kind of weather.

You really can't see it, but on the left of this picture, where there's a rectangular shape sticking out, is the tallest elevator in the world--"Hundred-Dragon Stairs to Heaven"百龍天梯. We were in line for quite a while to get into that elevator which took us right up to the top of the mountain. It was quite an amazing experience.

Now we are at the top of the mountains where everything felt so close. 

"Mountain Forest of the West Sea"

"Hallelujah Hanging Rock" Feel like Avatar?

We were suppose to take the public bus back down but after walking for a long time, no bus show up. It was getting darker and wetter, so our tour guide called the park rangers to send a bus to pick us up. The bus took us to the cable car station and we rode the cable car back down. It was quite scary riding the cable car in the dark. After getting off the cable car some people wanted to go to the restroom and it was totally dark. All the lights were turned off and they shut down everything already for the day.

Tonight, we enjoyed a nice dinner in the banquet hall at the resort. We had a ride on the golf cart to get there. Plenty of good food, wine, and beer. Good job XO Tours!