We visited another mountain this morning. Now, we all knew
we had a flight to catch later that afternoon and lunch beforehand. Several
times the question was asked, “what time do we need to be back to the bus?” but
a specific answer was never given, which was unusual and kind of annoying.
I wasn’t feeling too
fantastic that day. Colds and bugs were starting to work their way around the
bus. I only went about half way up the mountain before I decided I was done. Ryan still had
energy so I gave him the camera and told him to stay with the guys, there were
five of them all determined to get to the top. I slowly made my way back down
and sat and chatted with some of the ladies at the coffee shop at the bottom of
the mountain.
We watched as the group slowly made its way back down to the
starting point. Again, we hadn’t been given a specific departure time so
everyone just sort of came back when they felt like it. Half an hour passed,
about half the group was back. An hour passed, about 75% of the group was
there. An hour and a half…we were still missing some of the guys. Including
Ryan. We talked to other guys who claimed they had made it all the way to the
top and back down and had not seen our little group. We started getting a
little worried. I was worried because the mountain was slippery and Ryan had a
new hip that could have popped out if hit in the wrong place. One of the
British wives was also about to call the cavalry, her husband was also having
joint problems and she had specifically told him not to wander off. Gump even
talked to the park workers to check if anyone had seen them.
It was probably two hours before we finally saw them
strolling around the corner. They all had huge smiles on their faces because
they knew they were in trouble. They had actually gone past the “top” part of
the mountain to find a temple off the main trail. They made up stories about
having to save the orphans on the mountain. Uhhuh. It was a stupid move but
they were all okay and they still made it back in time for us to catch lunch. For the rest of the trip they were referred to as the famous five.
After lunch we took our last flight to Chongqing and
thankfully I didn’t get stuck next to any Chinese guys this time. The Chongqing
province contains over 32 million people, making it the largest province in the
entire world. We went to dinner at an art museum which sounded a lot more fancy
than it looked. When we walked in it looked like we were walking into a back
alley warehouse. But the basement of the art museum was cool, it looked like a
European wine cellar type place and the food was fantastic.
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