Am I Ever Going to Tell You About Where We Went and What We Did?

Well, of course I am! We went to a lot of places and enjoyed a lot of things. That’s it, end of blog entry.

I see those lessons I’ve taken on writing short blog entries are paying off. TeeHee! OF COURSE this is not the entry in its entirety! I have to tell you about the giant crater. It was the most exciting part of the trip. Well, as far as sights we saw goes, anyway.

Nature made, with man’s involvement restricted to carving the mother of all staircases into it, this cavity drills nearly 2 km into the ground. At the bottom lies a culmination of several waterfalls, spectacular when viewed from the depth. The river, product of the four waterfalls, channels through a cave opening to form a natural pool. Once at the bottom, the hardy explorer experiences not only the drop in temperature but the damp from all of that water cascading down.

We started out a little past 1PM, primed for adventure. Taunted by aromatic smells of deep fried potato cakes and roasted corn from the vendor stands Gary, Mask and I clomped down the gentle slope to the rim. Once there I asked if we could leave our bags at the security checkpoint. Whereas the guys had mildly loaded backpacks, I was carrying my side-slung black bag, and it was getting a cumbersome. Especially because Gary thought it would be a good idea to buy some fruit along the way, and we were each carrying our share.

Permission granted to leave our bags at the check station, we started down the first of the stairs. I drew a lot of looks because I was the only foreigner there. Luckily, no one disrupted my downward momentum to ask for a picture, although some did snap a photo of me and them in the frame on what they thought was the sly. Gary and Mask, still not used to that phenomenon, commented on it. I have had a year to get used to it so it didn’t bother me.

Climbing down presented no problem. There were stairs, lots of them but they were mild and interspersed with a lot of downward sloping, flagstoned lengths. “Not too bad!” I thought to myself as we paused for a picture by a cavern. The guys expressed their concern for me. None needed, Guys! I can do this all day long.

And I did. We did. It took nearly two hours to make it all the way to the bottom. At the midway point there is a small refreshment stand, and many choose to end their journey there. They take a tea or maybe have a bowl of noodles and then resurface with their knees barely worked out. They enjoy the fools walking past to further depths. Some such fools rent bamboo canes and continue down.

We neither stopped nor rented. Blithely pounding pavement, we kept going. Beyond the midway point the hand railing changed from simulated gnarled wood woven together but actually made of concrete to something that actually resembled an intentional handrail, made of concrete and painted in a blond wood pattern. We weren’t using the hand rail anyway, but I did find the difference between the handrails pre-and post snack stand remarkable. It was almost as though the grips were saying “OK now. You’re getting into some deep stuff here. Do you want to reconsider?”

Oh, no. not at all. The guys skipped along and I marveled at my joints not even creaking as I prevailed, step after step. I wasn’t even breathing hard! This was GREAT!!! The guys were worried about me though. They kept saying I should hang on to the handrail, or maybe, if I wanted a break… I took no breaks on the way down.

On the way up is a different story, but we’re not there yet.

I think, by the time I got down to 1,700m down I was starting to feel weakness in my legs. It might have been that the air was closer, or cleaner or more moist. It might have just been the exertion of going down stairs for over an hour. With only about 300m to go to the bottom, I wasn’t about to stop. Mask, frisky as he is, made it to the bottom first and recorded Gary and my descent for posterity. I couldn’t see Gary having to wait for me, so I shooed him on down. By the time I got there, he and Mask were taking turns posing for pictures first against this backdrop and then the next. Once I got there we broke out into a chorus of “We are the Champions!” people looked at us like we were fools. We were just giddy with our success.

It was short-lived, as it turns out. Going down approximately 4,000 stairs is vastly different than climbing them. My knees weren’t overexerted but I got winded very quickly. After making it past the first set of switchbacks – this staircase is set up like a steeply banked road up a mountain, my heart was pounding. Trying for deep breaths I found I had to stop every so often to get my ticker back into the normal range and force my lungs to function properly.

I am no athlete. I’ve been done in by improper breathing during any athletic venture I’ve ever taken part in, from basketball to simple aerobic routines. I’ve never been able to master the ‘breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth’ technique required by most strenuous activities. My endurance is pitiful.

Now the guys are really worried. They are seeing my red face and my trying to breathe and they are wondering if they are going to have to carry me out. Or, if they are going to have to hire someone to carry me out.

That’s right, there are porters with litters fashioned of bamboo to carry those out who cannot meet the challenge. Genuinely concerned for me, Gary inquired on the price of such a service. It was over 400Yuan… and that would probably be for a normal, Chinese sized person. I weigh twice what someone 4’10” with barely any meat on her bones weighs. They would probably charge double for me, or go charging back up the stairs in terror at the prospect of having to carry me. Besides, I don’t need porters. I just need to get my wind back.

I told the guys they could go ahead; assuring them I would be fine. They weren’t comfortable with that. I think, if the situations were reversed, I probably wouldn’t have been comfortable with it either. I appreciate their solicitousness, but really, it wasn’t necessary. I was going to make it out of that hole in the ground on my own power, even if I had to pause a little more often than they did. Much credit goes to them for trusting my judgment; they did leave me to my pace and pick up theirs, but they kept me in their sights from above.

Left to my own tempo and with no escort, I found other climbers very encouraging. ‘Jia You’ they kept saying, which means “Keep going!” We were all adventurers in the crater, didn’t matter if I was foreign, big, worn out, gasping for breath or massaging my knees – the one thing I did NOT do the whole climb. The Chinese had to stop and massage knees. In our various stops we encouraged each other. That is the important part. Many asked where I was from and the usual questions I get, like about my age and my family. Rather hard to make entertaining conversation when you are trying to catch your breath, but I managed.

Every so often, Gary and Mask made sure I was OK by shouting a greeting or encouragement to me. I waved at them and tackled another set of stairs. At some point I did think that this adventure might have been a mistake on my part, but that was only once, toward the end of the concrete handrails painted to look like wood.

One interminable switchback after another. I rounded the current one and there was Mask, waiting for me. Groan! Did they resume their former worries about my passing out? Is that why he’s waiting for me?

No, he just wanted to formally escort me to the snack stand at the halfway point, where Gary sat waiting for us with cans of Red Bull and a glass of hot tea. HOT DOG!!! I made it to the halfway point! I am invincible! Nothing can stop me now!

Let me try to describe how I felt at that moment. I was conscious of every cell in my body expanding, filling with joy and the power of being alive. I could barely contain myself, having to observe decorum for the sake of all those others who were resting. I wanted to shout and sing, I wanted to dance and embrace my friends. I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. I felt feather light, as though, were I to spread my arms I would fly away. Greens have never been greener and have never more beautifully contrasted with the browns of the rock they grew from. The sky, turning to dusk now, appeared silver rather than dull grey. The feel of hot tea going down my throat, the thrum of my muscles… for that magical moment I KNEW how it felt to maximize my potential as a human being.

And that was just the halfway point.

Finishing the climb with Gary who, by now, was feeling some pain we rewarded ourselves with a hot, stuffed potato snack. Mask had gone on ahead to retrieve our bags before they got locked in that office overnight. Gary expressed concern over how we would get back to town. We were back on level with the Earth; mundane concerns again intruded.

So what was the coolest part of this adventure: being the only foreigner there, descending and then ascending on my own power, that tasty potato cake, the company I keep, seeing that woman walk her pig down the road?

NOPE! The coolest part was the 10 minute motorcycle ride back up the hill to the main road! The guys on one scoot and I on another, the bikes piloted by expert riders sped us the rest of the way up the hill, our laughter tossed to the winds.