Walnut Garden Village, Tiger Leaping Gorge, China

Our first night we stayed at a small guesthouse with a great view of the mountains across the Gorge, and in the morning the clouds magically lifted for only a few minutes to reveal wonderful sharp, craggy tops. By the time we departed, they had lowered again. The second day's walk was flat and easy which meant we could enjoy the views of the HUGE mountains and cool steep cliffs more. Still had to watch our feet, though, as there were some pretty steep drop-offs at times. 'Jade Dragon Snow Mountain' is just under 18, 000ft and we had a cool view of its sheer face from our guesthouse in Walnut Garden on the second night. The food and toilets left a lot to be desired at Woody's G.H., but you couldn't deny its superb location!

We wanted to try a different route home, but weren't able to find anyone to share a taxi with us to the ferry (Sandra, Eda and Joel were going the other way). We decided on the taxi anyway only to be told that there was only one taxi and the others had just taken off in it! Bummer. So, knowing that there were buses going that way we had to head back the other way - the way we'd come. We ended up hitching a ride with a man and his family in their little minivan going that way. Mum and the two little girls in the back while Grandma was in the front seat being carsick, hacking and spitting away. Nice! The girls were sweet though and we had a lot of fun with them - they kind-of made up for our disappointment. When we got to town we saw the minibus lady that had brought us up, so we flagged her down. We waited for her to eat lunch, and then we took off for Lijiang - or so we thought! She stopped a 100 yards down the road only to explain that she needed to wait to pick up more passengers! We were not very happy and weren't going to wait until she'd filled her bus! We found the local bus to get us home instead - good enough for us and better than waiting! * Mush