Day 1

Our English friends from the hostel decided to come along to the Hungalong and Jiuzhaigou national parks, so this morning we were all up bright and early- 4am. We got picked up from the hostel and taken to our coach. It takes 8 hours to drive there from Chengdu. When we left it was still dark, so we all just slept for the first hour or so. Then when it became light and we'd crossed a tunnel and out of the other side, there were amazing views of dusty mountain peaks and a raging river.

The first stop we made was for lunch, which was probably at around 2pm. The food wasn't good, but Jimmy, the guy from our hostel warned us it wasn't, so we were prepared for it. After lunch, we drove up the mountains until we were at around 4,500 metres above sea level, passing little villages and fields of black yak. It was rather picturesque. Then when we got to the top, we all got out of the coach to stop and take pictures of the snow capped mountains. It was freezing cold up there, so it was only a brief stop. There were lots of colourful flags around us. The place certainly has a Tibetan feel to it, for sure.

We got back on the bus and continued descending down the mountain until we arrived at the Hulalong national park. The Chinese guide on our bus doesn't speak any English, so it could be difficult communicating. As we approached the park, a girl on our bus spoke English, so she translated what the guide was saying. She asked us if we wanted to take the cable car to the top of the mountain. I had heard it's worth taking it up as it's a few kilometres uphill and at altitude. We haven't acclimatised yet, and it's nearly 4,000 metres up, so it's best to get the cable car up the mountain.

Huangalong

So our guide bought everyone the tickets and we waited in the queue before we could go up the cable car. The tickets are fairly expensive for a 5 minute ride up the mountain. When we saw it going up, it looked pretty quick, and when we got on, it was fast. The views going up the mountain were beautiful. The girl who translated for us offered to come with us as she was worried about us, which was sweet of her. She studies in Canada, so speaks good English. Dave, Claire, John and I went off to walk around the national park with the Chinese girl.

When we arrived at the top of the cable car, we were shuffled out of there and onto a boardwalk kind of platform. The path is man made, so you don't really feel like you are in a wilderness, especially when there are so many Chinese people there too. I had read online that these parks are full of local tourists who come here, but until you arrive, you don't actually believe it. It's not somewhere you can come to relax to get away from the crows unfortunately, in fact it's the complete opposite.

We followed everybody and started walking down lots of steps to get to the main attraction of the park. As it's summer time here, a lot of the water and lakes have dried up, so the scenery isn't as spectacular as it would be in autumn or winter. There should be many waterfalls all flowing around the whole place, but as we were walking down from the top, there wasn't so much. We got told we should just head down to the one at the bottom, as that one never dries up.

The rest of the surrounding scenery around us was a stunning backdrop of mountains, valleys and gorges, so we can't complain too much. Along the way there were lots of people flaked out at the side of the path, I guess they were feeling the effects of altitude sickness. None of us were affected by it at all, luckily. At the top of this mountain we're at an altitude of around 3,500 metres, but compared to South America, I didn't even feel less oxygen in the air.

As we reached near the bottom of the hill, there were huge crowds of people all condensed in the same area. This is the Hualong place that everybody comes here to see. It's a tiered waterfall, pool of water that's just electric blue in colour. I can appreciate why so many people come here to see this magnificent natural wonder. When the sun was shining, the colours were certainly more vivid, although the sun didn't stay out all of the afternoon.

We shuffled towards the front, fighting amongst the locals to get a good picture spot. It's hard to get a photo without anyone else being in it. You really have to push your way through to even get to take a closer look at the pools, which gets tiresome. However if you've paid the entrance fees, you're entitled to take a look at what's in front of you. At least there are different vantage points. We weaved our way through everyone and carried on looking at the pools from a different angle, which constantly looked different

After we finished looking at these pools, we had to walk back down to the exit. If we had decided to walk up rather than take the cable car, this would have been the path we would have taken. We only have 3.5 hours here, so we would have been pushed for time if we had decided to walk up and down. There was more scenery to look at on the way down so you could choose which path you took. We took the path with more to see. I never realised that was quite a few places to see at this park.

The other things we saw were similar to what we'd already seen, but look different shapes. Some had mini waterfalls and lakes flowing into them, and with the back drop of all the mountains, it made everything look amazing. I can only imagine what it would look like when the waters are deep and the trees are burnt orange, brown, and red in colour. I kept stopping for photos, so we lost the others and continued going down ourselves. We had to be back for 6pm, so didn't have a lot of time to see all the scenery properly. But we still got to see it, which was the main thing. Right near the end, we got to see a lovely waterfall. We stopped for a quick pic, but it was getting on for 6, so we had to leave to get back on the bus.

Surprisingly, we were not the last ones on the coach. We waited for the last people to return for a while, then when they returned, the coach drove off. We got taken to a little Tibetan village and got dropped off at a hotel. We got taken straight into the dining room, where we had to eat dinner straight away. It was the same awful food that we'd eaten for lunch, so we hardly ate a thing. Then we got shown to our rooms, I noticed that we had an electric blanket, so that will be going on tonight! The rooms were much better than the food.

After we'd all checked in and got ready, we were still hungry from not having eaten too much for dinner, so we went out into the village to find food. Most places sold the same stuff and nothing looked that good. John found a street food place selling meat on a stick, then Dave found a place selling spicy chilli potatoes, which he'd been telling us about, so we sat in there to have some and a beer. It was getting pretty cold now, so when we left, we popped to the shop to stock up on supplies, then came back to our room to get all warm and cosy. We have to be up at 6am again tomorrow.