Wuyishan

After a nice nights sleep, the group met to start our days hike in the Wuyishan reserve in China's Fujian province. We left the hotel and caught a bus up to the reserve where our walk began. It was raining lightly but the group were excited to see the scenery. After walking over a few bridges and up a few steps we arrived at the start of TianYou Peak's hiking trail. Half of the group opted to climb the peak while the other half stayed on flat ground and explored the lake area. The hike took us up (according to my phone) 93 flights of stairs. The scenery was incredible and as you are climbing you are constantly getting different views everywhere you look. Unfortunately this also means people are continuously stopping to take pictures in the middle of stairs that can fit only one person at a time! There were several pavilions, waterfalls, temples and rock formations throughout the hike. Once we had reached the top of the peak and looked down, the view was one of the best I had ever seen. There had been an amount of rain leading up to our visit so the area was presented in a wonderful array of greens.

The area below (as seen above) Is part of the nine bend river which is mostly famous for bamboo rafting. If I remember correctly this photo is of the sixth bend in the river. A temple is also present at the top of the peak. The area is supposed to have been inspiration for many artists, scholars and writers in the past due to its peaceful nature. The ascent took around 45 minutes and was well worth the fairly steep steps. We then began the descent down to meet up with the rest of the group. After around 30 minutes and a small fall down a few steps, we had finished the trail. The next part of our reserve visit was a walk through some of the tea plantations. Wuyishan is particularly famous for its oolong tea. Our guide was telling us that tea growers rent bits of land within the reserve to grow their tea. Many signs can be seen within the tea that show the company those plants belong to.

Tea Plants

This part of the hike was considerably less steep but saw us crossing over several rivers. I came to love walking over the stepping stones to get to the other side. During our walk in the reserve, I met some of the friendliest Chinese people that we came across during our whole visit to the country. Many people were saying hello to us as we passed to which we responded 'Ni Hao'. We found another temple hidden away which we had a quick look around, decorated with Chinese lanterns and gold figurines, incense slowing burning. Once we had completed the trail we headed down to the river banks to board one of the well-known bamboo rafts. Unfortunately I did not enjoy it as it was freezing cold, windy, raining and the raft was taking on a little more water than I would've liked it to. I am sure if it was a sunny day and the seats had actually been strapped to the bottom of the raft instead of being precariously balanced, I may have actually enjoyed the mini tea ceremony on-board. But instead I was wishing away the minutes till I could get back on to dry land.

After finally disembarking the raft we headed back to Wuyishan town to our hotel. We had a few hours before dinner so I had a little walk to the shops but a majority of them seemed closed and I was getting a lot of odd looks as a foreigner walking around by themselves, so I gave up and had a shower. We met for dinner and half of us went for Chinese food and the rest went for fast food. The restaurant was small but cosy and the food was really good. Most of the meals we ate in China consisted of ordering many dishes and having them all in the middle of the table so you could help yourself. This night we had many fried vegetables, sizzling chilli beef, chicken and so much rice that the restaurant ran out. Would you believe a restaurant in China could run out of rice?
After a quick cornetto for dessert, I called it a night.


The next morning I got up early to join our guide for breakfast. Every night we were given the option if we wanted to go for breakfast the following morning, and this day I happened to be the only one who showed up. So I went with our guide around the corner from our hotel to get a large dumpling. In this area of China, dumplings seemed to be the norm for breakfast. Unfortunately it was a little spicy for my liking. The rest of the morning was free time which I spent loading my photos and packing my bags. At lunch time the group got together to have some food. We went to a nearby restaurant where we each had a bowl of noodles before jumping on a bus to the train station. Our train journey was from Wuyishan to Xiamen and took around 3 hours on the fast train so we arrived around 7pm, had dinner and went to bed.