Day 4: Today was a long, long day, but it will probably have been the highlight of the trip! It started shortly after 6 am, when the monks beating drums and ringing bells woke me up. It was fairly cold, and we dressed quickly and headed to breakfast. Breakfast was in a big cafeteria, and consisted of rice gruel, mantous (basically soft bland rolls), and a side dish of spicy cabbage, green beans and tofu. Not the best, but it gave us enough calories to get going.
We hiked for several hours yesterday, but the hike proper started today, with seemingly endless staircases going on and on and on! I think a regular hike would have been a little easier mentally than some of the staircases, because in real life you expect staircases to end after a certain interval, but these kept going. Other than that, though, the hike was very enjoyable, with breathtaking views every once in a while.
Just before lunch, we came upon monkeys for the first time. One came loping along the trail, then another and another, and they walked by us looking for food. None of us had any visible, thankfully, but a giro and her boyfriend right behind us were carrying a shopping bag on a pole with some food in it, and the monkeys went for it with a vengeance! They weren't hurt, thankfully, and it was entertaining to watch the monkeys go to town on the bag.
Shortly after we stopped for lunch, we came to the boundary between the subtropical and deciduous/evergreen forests, and the mist enveloped us. The steps were coated with condensation, which made for slick patches on occasion. It was really cool climbing through a cloud; it was also at this point that we saw a few maples with orange leaves, the first real evidence of fall! Joel had gone way ahead after lunch, and Seth and I finally caught up to him when the mist broke and we saw the sky for the first time. We rounded a corner and came upon an incredible view - looking out at a sea of clouds beneath us with a few other peaks of Emei Shan visible above the cloud cover, the sky brilliantly blue above us.
We hiked for another hour at least, and then came to a parking lot and e tourist center beyond that. There's a road that goes up nearly to the top of Emei, and people take buses up and hike the few kilometers to the top. So, despite the trail being sparsely populated nearly the whole way up, at this point we encountered throngs of thousands of people and stores selling stuffed monkeys and other touristy things all along the trail. We muscled our way through the masses and to the top, which took another couple hours.
The views from the top were breathtaking. There's a tall golden Buddha statue with several faces and a few temples on the top, but the best part was feeling literally on top of the world! In every direction, all we saw were clouds and a few lower peaks sticking out. After taking a lot of pictures, we went to head back down, but Joel wasn't with us, and all of our phones were dead. We spent a fruitless 20 minutes searching for him, and finally someone told Jason that they had seen him down the trail a little ways. I went down and found him heading back up. At this point, it was shortly after 5; we started down in search of a restaurant, but didn't find anything but snack places. Jason headed back up to camp on the mountain top for the night, and we kept heading down.
At the parking lot/bus station, we found that the ticket office was closed. A van driver offered to take us for ¥300, which sounded unreasonable until we realized that bus tickets would have been ¥50 each anyway. I haggled him down to ¥275, and off we went. This guy was a professional. He didn't slack his pace in the mists, despite low visibility, and he passed every single car and bus we came across on the windy, two-lane mountain road, even around corners, honking as he went!
As we approached the hotel, we asked him if he knew the best way to get to Chengdu. The regular buses had stopped running, but he asked some people near our hotel, and a woman said she would sell us tickets for a bus to Chengdu, but it was leaving immediately. Josef and Seth ran to get our things at the Teddy Bear Hotel, and Joel and I followed the lady to the bus. Nicole stayed in the van to pay the driver. At the bus, we loaded our things in and bought tickets, but there was no sign of Nicole. Joel went to find her, and we spent an anxious couple minutes waiting for them. He came back without her, but she appeared from the other direction with the van driver. It turns out she didn't have the correct change, so the driver drove her down the street, she saw us, and they stopped and we gave her some change to pay the driver. Then we all piled on the bus, and now we're our way to Chengdu. Again with the tender mercies - if we hadn't hired this driver, we definitely would not have made this bus to Chengdu, because it left just a couple minutes after we got to the hotel, and the driver knew who to ask about buses!
Now we're sitting in a hostel room in Chengdu; we got to Chengdu around 11, and we spent an hour walking around looking for a place to stay. Finding a place to stay last minute as a foreigner in China is hard! We ended up coming to a hostel, after which we ordered McDonalds (they deliver in China). First Big Mac I've ever had. It was okay, I guess. Nicole is sleeping on the twin bed and Joel and I are sleeping on the double bed, after Seth and Josef gracefully insisted on sleeping on the floor. Bedtime!
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