Yunnan; land of yaks and bike riding peacocks

Sorry for the immense delay in my updates. It's not for lack of time I'll tell you that. It's because China is slowly sucking the life out of me. I've found the numbing my brain with endless seasons of the OC, Six Feet Under and Desperate Housewives is a much more pleasant way of spending my time compared to being spat at by all of Chengde. Fear not, I'll be home and well fed by the first week in July. Cross your fingers.
Anyway I've decided to skip the winter holiday for now and write about my May holiday, also known as May Day/Labor Day/Spring Break. My traveling party consisted of Brandon, my ever faithful and pigmently challenged companion, Matt, dancer of tables and wearer of helmets, Julie, contracter of malaria and other unpleasant hives and David, able to devour plates of fried meal worms and locust in a single lunch hour. Our destination - Yunnan Province in Southwest China.

The journey started on April 28th when I took a private car to Beijing with gal pal and fellow English teacher, Tricia Cuna, two random Chinese businessmen and our driver Mr. Lu who had a penchant for Chinese pop ballads and German techno music. No problems so far. I just kept my eyes closed and prayed for the two and a half hours it took us to drive to the Beijing airport - a drive that normally takes about 5 hours. Tragedy struck, however, when David discovered that his ticket had been booked to depart on May 28th and return on May 8th (Communism has afforded the awesome ability of traveling through time. Many believe it has something to do with the "every man for himself" mentality used when traveling, apparent in the general pushing, shoving and rib crushing that occurs upon entering and exiting public transportation... forward thinking, backward action... it's all too complicated for me, I'm not a scientist). Tragedy averted easily though, with a 300 yuan fee, and we boarded our flight. Kunming, the capitol of Yunnan, was a breath of fresh air, literally because the air is not as polluted as Beijing. Though I have the treat of clean air up in Chengde, the kids from Shijiazhuang breath in air from the third most polluted city in China every day. Our stay wasn't long and we basked in the glory of our good fortune at being able to get on the next train to Dali that night over some warm beers and dehydrated noodle bowls.

April 29th we woke up in Dali, an old but developing city far West of Kunming. After finding a suitable guesthouse in charming "old town" we decided that the woman that had been following us around for the last 15 minutes actually did have a reasonably interesting business and followed her to the main road to board our valiant steads. These horses were by far the smallest specimens I had ever seen. My horse's head came up to my shoulders, maybe, and it's back was about as tall as my ribs. Somehow Brandon got the smallest horse, Matt's saddle was a little cock-eyed and Dave's horse got into a fight with some other horses we were passing (biting, rearing and jumping were involved). But we were off! To climb Zhonghe Shan (Zhonghe Mountain)! Our guides were Stella and weird man with a stick who led us through the narrow, rocky and sometimes fairly steep trail... on foot. Matt led the way on Mao Zedong, or Maosy for short, I came next on Black Betty, though I soon realized that all of our horses were male shortly after bestowing this name, Julie was next on Harmen or Hubert or something of that nature, Brandon on Little Mo, and David brought up the rear on Buster. There was a temple on the top of the mountain and a foot path that you could take to see some of the nature preserve. The real kicker came after we had descended the path and were returning to base camp on the main road. I don't know if our horses were hungry or our horse whisperers wanted to get back for the next load but we started cruising at a good solid trot through town which, if you didn't know, is the most jarring way to ride a horse. I thought my head was going to fall off and my bum was sufficiently bruised for the next 2 days.