China Trip - Day 5 Nine Dragons Mountain

This is the first shrine as you enter the shrine complex.  You can see the steps starting just behind it.   

The man taking care of the shrine in the last photo was setting off fireworks and burning incense.   

At the lowest pavilion there were 12 sculptures of the Chinese zodiac lining the walkway.  

Here I am posed with my zodiac sign, the Snake.  

Looking out over the lush mountains. 

This sign reads 3800 steps to the top, so I was told.  

First pavilion

Looking out over Huidong.

Steps, steps, and more steps!

My coworker Jeff Goodsell and our host Maria. 

This picture is not great but if you look carefully you can see how steep the trail gets towards the top.  

The city lights of Pingshan.  

Me and Maria.

After working all day at our host factory we decided to end the day with a hike up the 3800 steps to the top of the Nine Dragons Mountain.  Wow, this was exhausting and killed my knees!!!  The hike started out easy enough.  There were 9 pavilions spaced out evenly all the way to the top, so we could rest along the way.  However, as you get closer to the top of the mountain the steps get tighter together and become much taller.  So much so that it felt like we were climbing up the last set of steps.  Of course we didn’t start early enough and so it was dark by the time we got to the top.  While standing at the top and looking down at the city lights we heard a very loud “BOOM” which scared the crap out of all of us.  It turns out it was a plane breaking the sound barrier.  This is not something you want to hear at the top of a mountain in a foreign country.