Saturday was my first trip out with a Cuzo hiking group. Soso was my main contact and was super awesome in helping get me signed up and knowing where to go to get the right bus!
It was a long day… 2.5 hours each way on the bus, all the way out to Hebei province, and then hiking about 6 hours as well. But! Completely worth it! I have been searching for real hiking like this since I’ve come to China! Having hiked in the UK, USA, and parts of Europe, China is a completely different experience, not to mention the language barrier. After getting off the 880 bus we hired two vans to carry our group of 10 out to our starting point.
Walking through the village, we encountered some locals and asked for directions… I groaned as their eyes popped out of their heads, they pointed their fingers at me, and declared, “You have a foreigner with you!” It’s situations like this that give a little taste of what it must be like to be famous, and make me glad that I’m not!
There was cloud cover ‘til about lunchtime, then the sun came out and there were blue skies! Good air, good day for a hike. We happened upon a movie set, which was a bit of a surprise… come around the corner after a narrow-ish passage between two big rocks and we see some guys dressed up in early 20th Century military uniforms. Turns out they were making a film about the Sichuan army throwing back the Japanese invaders. The only way to get around was to walk right through the middle of the set! It was a bit unnerving looking up to the hills and seeing all of the uniforms with riles! But all of the extras were friendly and shouted hello and waving!
We saw old traditional ‘cave dwellings’ which were more like lean-to’s built up against holes dug out of the soft and sandy landscape. We visited an old abandoned school and village. I was told the reason the people left was because there was no more water… but I couldn’t believe how green everything was! We hiked up and over some small foothills for the first half of the day, going through orchards and gardens tucked away neatly into the hillsides. After lunch everything flattened out and we had a quicker pace, with the sun beating down on us. The brush on the mountains was quite prickly, and I should have worn long pants to better protect my knees and shins from all of the scratches they got.
Overall it was a very lovely sweaty dirty hike, and I’m looking forward to going out on more trips with these folks!
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