Tianmen Mountain

Day 12

 

We got out of the hotel a bit later than we intended to because Andrea had some stomach pain. We headed to a cable car ride that took us to the top. Each gondola seated eight and the ride was really long. Andrea read somewhere that the ride was 4 miles but it didn't seem that far. The line to get on the cable car was undoubtedly that long, however. I've seen lines for popular Disney attractions that were shorter.

The scenery was impressive, we walked along paths that wound along the sides of the steepest cliffs I've ever seen. We took a chair lift from one peak to another, watching the forest pass below. We ate at the top of the second peak. We got boiled corn this time and it was slightly less like a pencil eraser in texture than the roast corn was but it had the same taste. I honestly have no idea how they can do that to corn. Andrea thinks they grow it that way.

 

The entire day I have had a low grade store throat and headache but I refuse to let it affect me.

We came down by a combination of escalators and busses, but Ari and I climbed down 800 steps in the middle. The bus was cool, winding through a copious number of switchbacks on the side of the mountain. I dozed a bit, not much because of my back pain, and Andrea slept on my shoulder.

We got back in the van to head to the next city. It's a four hour drive and is already 6:30 so Andrea and Li Feng went to a grocery store and bought a variety of fruit, bread, marinated eggs, cucumber, milk, beef jerky, peanut butter, rice pudding, sausage, desserts, and a bag of chopsticks. We ate while traveling.

Andrea was horrified to learn that the long drive was only about 100 miles but we had to take local roads, full of goats, dogs, pedestrians, three wheeled vehicles, and other obstacles including a couple of places where the road was dug up and we had to go over dirt as rutted as anything I've seen in Guatemala, which had the worst roads I've seen so far.

After dinner Evan had a huge tantrum and Joshua freaked out over it. Between Joshua always being upset with Evan and Andrea frustrated with the lack of translation and difficulty communicating I am constantly worried that we're going to insult Li Feng who has meticulously planned this part of the trip, bends over backwards to make sure that we are comfortable and carries Evan up and down mountains or through hot cities for hours every day. For all their complaints, Evan is a trooper, napping in little bits and pieces while in a car or being carried and we can't be a picnic with our picky eating and the kids constant complaints.

I began to read The Goldfinch as we drove through rural China, my throat burning, and Andrea on her laptop working.