Hiking Down Mt. Emei

(Molly)

Steve and I decided to hike down Mt. Emei. It was raining, so the ground was slippery. The path was laid with stones, slightly sloped and with a lot of stairs. I looked at so many stairs that I started to lose my depth perception! I also slipped once, which was slightly painful. The climbing-down-stairs leg muscles aren’t really muscles we use that much, so it got very tiring. It was worth it though, because the scenery was stunning. It looked like the Amazon, although it was much much colder. After about 1/2 hour of walking, Han pointed us down a different trail, at the end of which he told us we would find the wild monkey area. To get there took about 15 minutes, and was the most breathtaking scenery I have seen here. The path ran next to a mountain stream, which is one of my favorite things in the world. The monkeys were not so breathtaking. In fact, they were kind of obnoxious. When we first got there, we were crossing a wood and rope bridge packed with people blocking our view when suddenly one of the bigger monkeys plowed across the bridge. Despite all the signs I had passed telling me not to, I screamed a little. Then one put his hands on my pants, leaving muddy pawprints. It didn’t matter that much, because about a foot of my pants on the bottom was already soaked and muddy, but I was still a little peeved. We passed a monkey drinking from a water bottle, and one climbing on a screaming girl ( I was so glad not to be her). Clearly, these were not wild monkeys. When we got back to Han, we were rewarded with a fabulous lunch of local products. We laughed at ourselves because we looked SO bedraggled．We were soaked from head to toe, and my shoes are tractionless, so I was slipping all over the floor. We were so glad to see that tea at lunch. We also ate bamboo shoots, which made us feel closer to the pandas we had seen the day before. The hike down was uneventful, except that the scenery was beautiful and I wished it were warm enough to swim.