Maluan Mountain

On Saturday, Vi and I went out for a little adventure. There have been a couple of beautiful days recently in the 50s and 60s, so we decided to go outdoors Saturday. We found a place call Maluan Mountain. We got on a bus from the bus station near our place and took it to Xiaomeisha Beach. It's an hour trip on the bus for 6 RMB (about $1).

Once we got off the bus, it was a short walk on the road, then we saw the beginning of the trail. Unfortunately, this is China and there aren't many places to get outdoors in Shenzhen so we were with over 100 people from the beginning. This started off as far from my idea of getting outdoors.

At the beginning there was a large opening and we came across a company on a team-building trip. We asked some people how many of them there were and they simply replied with well over a hundred...great.

We continued our walk and came to our first choice: take the easy, slightly-sloping trail or the straight-up-the-cliff trail. We chose the straight-up path. Quickly, we ran in to a traffic jam on the trail as we realized the group in front of us had several small children who had begun to cry saying they didn't want to do this.

Anyway, we passed a lot of the people and enjoyed our hike. We met up with another group at an interesting place where they were descending straight down in to the valley. We decided to follow and had some fun, even with a large group of people. We made our way to the stream leading up to the waterfall.

From here, we hopped, jumped, scooted and climbed our way up the mountain to the waterfall. This was a blast. Thanks to the sound of the water, we really couldn't hear many people. Plus, this was just like being a kid again - it was great.

We did eventually make our way to the waterfall which was nice but much smaller than I was hoping.

We had been hiking for almost 2 hours and we were beginning to get hungry. Vi had heard of a village that was supposed to be nearby at the top of the mountain. We continued our climb with a group we had been near the entire time.

At the top, one of the guys asked to take a picture with me. I said of course and we posed for a picture. Then, the whole group wanted a picture with us. This is common in China. If you ever go out to popular places, at least once, white people will be asked to have a picture taken with someone or a group.

We began talking with everyone and found out they were students at Shenzhen University. They were going to the same village for lunch so we walked with them the rest of the way.

One interesting thing on the way was a sign that someone had written on. They wrote that the government should be overthrown and be a free government for the people. I was very surprised to see this as this is the first time in 1.5 years in China that I've ever seen or heard anything like that.

We arrived at a village and had a great lunch at a very small place next to a lake. We sat outside in the shade of some trees and it was perfect.

After lunch, we parted ways with our new friends and found out how to get to Pingshan Village. The people said "just follow this road and it will lead to a big road where you can catch a bus."

They didn't tell us that road went on for about 10km, roughly 6 miles. After an hour and a half of walking, we were able to hitch a ride with a young guy driving a truck full of trees. He drove us down to the main road.

We walked on the road for a while, asking people how to get to a bus stop. Finally, we got to a bus stop and luckily I recognized a bus that passes one of the stops near the school. There were no signs for buses or anything so we worried. We didn't really know how far away we were but the bus took over 2 hours to get to my kindergarten.

All in all, we had walked a little over 15 km (10 miles). We were exhausted. While jumping rock to rock is very fun, it works muscles we rarely use.

It was a great, short excursion.