We got up early to beat the crowds only to realize that you don't beat the crowds in China.

Everybody is up, in their tour group, and on the go. And everybody seems to be having a good time. Wulingyuan is a national park, but not like any park we have been to in the US. It is much more developed and everybody even goes through turnstiles to get in: we buy a plastic ticket like a credit card and they take our thumbprint which is then checked against the card every time we go through the turnstiles. Inside, all the paths are limestone pavers, and all grade changes are steps – every path that goes up and down, has steps. We took a tram to the top of one crag and then walked down – it turned out to be thousands and thousands of steps. Our knees and legs were ruined. But, before we walked down, we decided to check out a tea house overlooking the valley-

only to run into a typical crowd scene of people renting "minority group"

clothing and having their picture taken. It was not a nature experience, but it was great fun to watch.

Then we started down the stairs, and down, and down; along with thousand of other people and past begging (and sometimes attacking) monkeys.

We spent the major part of one day walking down a trail next to a stream through a gorgeous canyon. Michele said This is the most beautiful place I have ever been and I  allowed that it wasn't more beautiful than Zion. Michele said Yea, except that it has wild Azaleas and Irises everywhere and monkeys. This is very true. Wulingyuan has the sane kind of beauty as Yosemite valley or Zion: we are in tree filled valleys looking up at the canyon walls. Here the walls are crags and pinnacles of quartzite, red in a lot of places, with trees leafing out in bright green, and lot of pink Azaleas. It is stunning.   

Actually, the raining and packedness of the park played right into our plans: now we could stay inside and watch the Chinese F1 race without guilt.

After the race, the rains started to clear and we wandered out to the park . Where we were given a few tantalizing glimpses of what we could expect tomorrow.

We are staying at the Xiangdian International Hotel which is a short walk from one of the entrances to Wulingyuan National Park. Wulingyuan is China's first National Park and a UNESCO protected site. By all accounts, it is one of the most beatiful places in the world.

We got a great deal on our hotel room which is huge and has a view of the park, but this is not really an "International" hotel, it is a Chinese hotel. And the differance is critical. From what we can tell, 99% of Chinese tourists travel in groups and the hotel is geared to handling groups. They are not sure what to do with two westerners traveling alone although the brochure in the room says "Our hotel is equiped with the alone type guestroom". There are two diningrooms, the Chinese Diningroom in which you can only dine if you have a group of ten or more, and the Western Diningroom, which is in the eastern part of the hotel and serves Chinese food.

We arrived at about 9AM and our room wasn't ready so they suggested we have breakfast in the Western Diningroom. I had noodles with pork and green onions and Michele had noodles soup and we both had cooked to order (in front of our very eyes on the buffet line) fried eggs. Eating a fried egg with chopsticks is a new expearance but, by putting it on top of the noodles or in the soup, it can be done.

Meanwhile, at the park, it was raining and packed.

After falling asleep on the train to Zhangjiajie, we woke the next morning (OK, I woke several times during the night when we stopped at various towns. The first time, I wandered down the hall to use the squat toilet only to be stopped by the warning not to use in the station.) to the end of the ride in a mountainous area.

By then it was starting to rain and by the time we got to Zhangjiajie, it was really pouring. Unfortunately, from the station (which was magnificent)

to the taxi stand was a about a 1/4 mile in the rain, so we were pretty wet by the time we got in the cab. The trip to the National Park at Wulingyuan was about 45 minutes in the rain and we got to our hotel damp but unscathed for our first real travel with no English speakers to help. (At Moon Hill, we had somebody write the name of our new hotel in Chinese so all we had to do was show the name to the taxi driver and argue price using sign language.

In the mini-series, Shogun, about half way through, after the hero has been living like a Japanese for a couple of years (maybe five one hour episodes in our time), the hero runs into a group of Dutch traders. They are shockingly gross: pinkish-red, fat, loutish Europeans. That's how I felt when we checked in to our hotel: we had been on train all night, hadn't bathed, walked through the rain, and the girls behind the counter were impeccable in their purple silk.

When we left the Yangshuo area, we felt like we had really entered China. No internet, no English signs, nobody who spoke English to help us. First we took a three hour taxi ride to Liuzhou. We rode through miles and miles of farming country under a heavy sky that got darker with each mile.

We thought that we had no idea what to expect when we got to Liuzhou, but, when we got there we realized that we had expected some signs in English. There were none. The train station was big and looked great from the outside but the inside was sort of sterile and dirty at the same time.

We got there at 7PM expecting to  eat before our 9:15 "soft sleeper" to Zhangjiajie and we sort of fantazied that we would have an internet connection, but there was no restuarant, no snack shop; so Michele wandered out into the city and got some food in strafoam boxes that we ate in the waitingroom.

We were the only westerners in the train station and everybody watched us as we ate. The schedule sign did have our train number, 2012, so we felt fairly confident that we would get on the right train.

The train ride turned out to be completely painless bordering on comfortable.