Wuyi Shan

The following weekend ( July 15th - 17th), we visited Wuyi Shan. We flew there on Xiamen Airlines. It was about an hour flight from Xiamen - about 230 miles.

The mountains of Wuyi Shan are gorgeous and the area is wonderful for exploring, hiking and - yes - climbing! In that it was "high" tourist season, it was quite crowded with Chinese vacationers. I think we were the only westerners present - which meant we had our photos taken!!

We spent our first morning there exploring a cave with bats - it was ok - but a bit claustrophobic for my taste. Bats are considered quite special by the Chinese. We then hiked to the Water Curtain Cave - which was fairly steep but the path did have stone type steps that were uneven - but made the climb a bit less imposing. It is on this path that we saw thousands of tea trees - actually they are bushes!  The main tea that is grown here is Oolong - and the tea trees are called the "red tea trees" because the earth is more red than black. It is gorgeous scenery - quite amazing.

Of course, the town of Wuyi Shan is filled with tea shops. We visited one on Saturday evening and tasted eight diffferent types of tea. The tea is prepared with a ritual and served in tiny cups. It is considered ok to slurp the tea!



Tea trees



Tea trees amid the Wuyi Shan mountains



Farmers working on their tea trees





The "path" we took as we climbed the hills





The bamboo rafts: loading dock





That would be me - note how relaxed my hands are!




Oh - so those are called rapids for a reason!




Pretty amazing!

 The following morning we prepared ourselves to hop on a bamboo raft ( yep made of bamboo!) to go down the Nine Bend River. The scenery is beyond belief - as you will see from these photos. We sat on bamboo chairs - that one of the people who shared the boat - let us know that they were perched on the boat - "not attached" -- REALLY???? I managed to stifle my scream and went with the program.