Day 45: February 17, 2013 Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place

When we woke up from our nap we grabbed some McDonald’s breakfast, which was some needed fuel. We boarded the train and it was really nice and empty and I was probably asleep within 10 minutes and got woken up to get off about an hour later when we arrived in Shaoguan. Upon arrival in Shaoguan we had our first hiccup of the trip. We realized that John didn’t write down the name of our hostel or having any way of telling a cab where to take us. We couldn’t figure out which bus would take us to where we needed to go but eventually we found some wifi and got a cab to the general area of where our hostel was, which was near the Danxiashan Global Geopark.

Finding our hostel was pretty interesting considering the directions weren’t very helpful and we eventually ended up walking into a random building and somehow it was exactly where we were supposed to be. The name of the hostel was posted nowhere and had no indication of what it was but somehow it worked out. We unloaded some stuff but were a little skeptical because our room had no lock but the owners assured us it was really safe. Our next mission was to get some food in us before starting to hike so we found some guy making noodles and got a couple of orders to split. They were really good and the people were really nice.

Hostel room

We then made our way to the park and bought our tickets to get in and immediately headed towards the main attraction, or penis rock, more formerly known as Male Stone. We climbed a few different trails to get some different views of the mountains and also stumbled upon the Breast Stone, which was pretty funny next to the penis rock. We took a few different trails and did a lot of hiking, including making it all the way to the top of one of the mountains, which was quite a trek up a lot of unbelievably steep stairs.

A picture is worth a thousand words!

We made our way down from there a different way than we went up which was pretty crazy with some parts that were so steep that they were actually just ladders made out of stone. We were pretty glad we went up the other way and down that way. Once we made it down a little while we went back up to what they call the best viewing spot of the penis rock that had a little gazebo. We took some funny pictures of the rock, what the guys like to call “dick pics,” and then just hung around for an hour or so to relax and enjoy the great view. We talked with this Taiwanese couple who ended up giving us their map of the park which turned out to be really helpful.

After they left we made our way the rest of the way down the mountain. On the way John had a little slip up and tripped off the path and landed his right foot in a giant puddle of mud. He just took it out and continued on to try to brush it off but the rest of us could not stop laughing for the life of us. It was one of the funniest moments of my whole time here, and definitely on this trip. After we stopped laughing long enough to continue walking we headed back towards to the hostel to find some food for dinner.

We decided to just wing it and walk around and go into the first person’s house-looking establishment we saw. We ended up in this woman’s house with a little baby strapped on her front and got some noodles and eggplant with garlic, both of which were great. We then hung around and played some euchre. John and I ended up winning the first round and Adam and Bryan tied us with the second. There was a guy there who kept watching the game and we felt bad because there is no way he was going to figure it out just by watching.

We each had a beer with dinner and then decided to head back to hostel when Adam came across too easy of an opportunity that he couldn’t pass up. There was a fridge of beers outside with no one watching them so he snagged a few and went back for more as the night went on. We all took showers which were great, and then just hung out in the main room of the hostel and drank some of the stolen beers. Adam then came up with the brilliant idea to play red/black at which point John and Bryan called it a night. Adam and I played the game until we realized we were up way too late to wake up at 4:20 in the morning to go see the sun rise. We got to bed a little after midnight and slept on our pieces of plywood covered with a little pad that were way more comfortable since we were so exhausted.