Day 13 - Fenghuang - Zhangjiajie

Fenghuang - Zhangjiajie

After 2 nights in Fenghuang, It was once again time to move along. We had a big breakfast of noodle, chilli & egg from a street stall, treated ourselves to a take away coffee, packed our bags & set off. Our hotel manager was exceptionally helpful by giving us bus times, hailing a taxi & negotiating the price of the taxi for us.
He was a huge help during our stay, we had limited to no Wi-Fi & couldn't find things easily on our own.  We highly recommend staying at 166 Inn hotel because of its fantastic location and the super friendly manager.

Once at the bus station, it was easy enough to buy tickets and find our departure gate. We had some small success in now being able to decipher some writing on our tickets without help from technology, things like our departure gate and seat numbers! The mass of foreign symbols is slowly becoming less daunting. Our bus was meant to leave at 1.30pm but was late & instead we left at 2pm. The Chinese countryside continues to show off it's natural beauty in the form of mountains, farming villages, crops & at 4.30pm we could see wind turbines perched high on a mountain range. The dirt now seems to be of a dark red colour & scattered across the hills you can see graves/tombs, something we had not seen/noticed before today. 

The bus arrived at the final destination at 5:30pm, in the centre of town, Zhangjiajie, something we were slightly unprepared for. Our accommodation and reason for travelling all this way was still an hour away in Wulingyuan Scenic area, up a mountain, also known as the Zhangjiajie National Forrest Park. Above all things in China, this is something I am most excited to see! 

Just outside the bus station terminal was a very friendly Chinese man in a smart looking minivan who seemed very keen to help us out. We were able to use Google Translate to ask him for directions at which point he let us to a friend of his that could speak some English. This friend advised of his taxi service and after agreeing on a price & without too much delay we set off up the mountain. An hour later we arrive and found our hostel right on the border to the national park. Again Tom has done a fantastic job booking the accommodation with a more than perfect price and location!!!

Once done checking in & depositing our bags we set off to explore & find some dinner.  We found some cheap street food with three pages of vegetarian options at a reasonable price!! Winning ! Finding reasonable priced & yummy vegetarian options has been somewhat of a struggle for me.

Also on this menu a few comical translation errors such as 'sizzling crystal powder' and 'egg with three colored water' 

 There was also a variety of game meat such as giant salamander, bamboo rat and snake. After being tame in our dinner decisions & enjoying every mouthful we headed back to the hotel for some blogging and a big night of sleep. 

I'm hoping the weather holds out, its meant to rain a lot tomorrow ! 

- Alli