Tuesday March 8th, 2011 - Water and Hiking Adventures

Today was one of my favorite days of the trip. I feel like it was a day that was sort of unplanned, but I honestly don’t know. We woke up mad early like usual and drove for about four hours by bus. Our final destination was a cruise on the Yangtze River, however we had many stops along the way.

On this journey we passed farming and lots of construction. The city was all of a sudden very rural rather than the city. There was much open land.

We got off in the middle of our journey. Half way in, 2 hours. We ate some lunch. This restaurant we ate in was probably one of the coolest restaurants I have ever seen. The restaurant looked like a cave inside, the rocks were the walls of the building. Also this restaurant was on a huge water front area, which was absolutely gorgeous.

After we ate all of us as a group hiked up a little mountain to have a better view of this water. Pictures upon pictures were taken and the higher we got the more beautiful the view got. Lots and lots of pictures were taken. In the midst of this little hike of ours it looked like there was once or still was a ropes coarse. However it looked very dangerous and unstable. Of coarse some members of our group wanted to try it out. But our tour guide Linda kept yelling no unsafe!

When we reached the top there were little stores but mainly there was this HUGE CAVE. Yes actual cave not like the restaurant. I have no pictures of this cave but it went on forever it seemed. It was amazing and all closed in. I thought it was never going to end. When a group of us made it out of the cave there was little girl running around, her mother was working at one of the little shops, at least that’s what it looked like. She was flat out adorable.

After this hike up the see the view, we climbed back down. When we got to the bottom of our hike we went on this little boat and got to take it on the water that we were awing over. It was a very short journey but was very exciting! Today was the first day we did a very lot of walking. It was also one of the first days that I began to see a lot of just stray dogs walking the streets. Made me a little sad since I am a total dog person.

Shortly after this adventure we got back on the bus for two hours and arrived to our cruise boat. I remember thinking there will be ramps to carry my luggage to the boats. Um not at all, more like there were hundreds of stairs to bring our luggage back and forth on.

We got on the boat and Elise and I got handed our room keys. They were decent rooms. Hard beds again. I was freezing at all times when on the boat. I wore leggings under armor and my coat to bed, tons of layers and was still cold. This trip was going to be a 2 day travel cruise thing. This was our first night.

This day/ night was the first time I actually felt I was bonding with everyone on the trip. It was a great night. I fell asleep pretty early though.