Zhangjiajie Shi, China

Were it not for James Cameron and the movie Avatar, these beautiful peaks might still be undiscovered to the world. It’s truly a magnificent geological formation. It’s height , the unusual narrow mountains in shapes of mushrooms and pillars makes the Zhangjiajie national forest some kind of phenomenon. Today it’s renamed Avatar’s Hallelujah mountains. It would be almost impossible to get there were it not for the 8 people gondolas, a system of shuttles and cement pathways. What a freak thing of nature. You walk over a stone bridge with an huge arch underneath with views of various pillars. It feels foreign with this dense foliage on top, tons of ferns and trees at the bottom, it’s high humidity and water trickling in the rocks everywhere and a musty fragrance. We have our usual Chinese buffet lunch in the park and this one was mediocre at best. But what happened afterwards was priceless; the Chinese paparazzi were taking pictures of all the blondes which consist of at least half the group but the dark haired ones were left to watch! Awe! Then some Chinese man starts serenading Kat with a Chinese song, so cute! This afternoon Karyn and I discovered a bit of fauna in the park; the very bold and brazen Macaque monkeys. Many mothers were just jumping on the railing with their babies hanging for dear life on their belly, looking for food. The males were just hanging on branches calmly looking at us as if we were the zoo! We took one of the tallest elevators in the world on the way down after taking the gondola. The views were tremendous. That night we decided to be just like the locals. We joined the many dancers on the street for a Few minutes. We stopped at a small market for fruits, we then mozied on over a huge supermarket. We had to rely on photos on the packages as everything was in Chinese and of course no one spoke English. We were one of the few caucasians. I bought some chips and a small hot pizza, the dough was sweet yet with pepperoni, strange mix! We, Aman, Kat and I went to a restaurant so Kat could have her vegetarian pizza. It was another day for the memory book!