We decided to get out in the countryside a bit, a walk to see an old quarry with a giant buddha built in.
Hmmm...
This is where we wanted to go. (Yes to the top!)
We didn't stop to explore the caves, but there were quite plentiful at the start of our path:
We thought we were lost quite a few times, as the path seemed to wind rather than get us to the base of the mountain.
But these signs didn't seem to say danger so all looked promising :)
Everything felt a little 'Jurassic park'.
After what seemed a million stairs, and some decent hiking, an hour later we reached some sort of summit!
The view was gorgeous.
We thought our day of hiking was over, but after another 30 minutes of different trails, we couldn't find the cable cars that were supposed to take us down the mountain.
Eventually we asked for help and met Nam-e and Matsa. Lucky for us, both of the were learning English!
They took it upon themselves to take us to the right area, and also the Giant Buddha (we had conveniently forgotten that was supposed to have been the point of our trip!)
So we had to walk halfway down the way we had come (argh) and then walked and climbed stairs for another 90 minutes or so - onto the second peak of the day!
It is all a strange mix of mountain, views and geometric rock shapes where the blocks have been cut.
We eventually reached the top, thanked our guides and found some pretty views. And then we found him!
The walk down the other side (this quickly turned into a whole day walking session!) was full of oddities too:
These red trees were stunning, so I made Ryan have a photo with them :)
They seem to try to make this difficult for us. 1 - incase it rains, 2 - incase we happen to have wifi and a translator app where, if readable, we could have translated the text.
When we finally reached the town at the end of our trek, we tool the beach route to the station.
whew... then it was just time to try and find out way home.
x
