After the monkey attack, all I wanted to do was to head out of this mountain as soon as possible and chuck out the itinerary I had for the day on Emei. I was very hungry and stopped at a noodle stand. Unfortunately the shop keeper is more French than anything else who could not stand tourists who are the financial providers of her livelihood. She resents the existence of tourist because they are the sole reason to her misery, which is work. She was mean and complained right out loud with lots of attitude.
On the trail down I ended up going on the wrong trail and found myself going west instead of south. Well, everything has a reason and there are no true accidents. My legs continued to swell up and scream in pain from the deep monkey bits. I applied medication I had on me every other hour. Every time I stopped I was in more pain. I realized the only way for me to heal quickly and move the chi is to walk.
I came across a man named Andreas from Frankford, Germany. He is a software product manager who is biking all over china on his vacation. He plans to bike into Vietnam and Thailand, both countries I would also like to visit one day. We ended up partnering up and walking for the next 8 hours together. It wasn't what I had planned but I knew that when I stopped walking I would feel the pain, I knew if I kept walking I can get the blood circulating more and heal the wounds.
His goal was to locate particular specie of frogs found here and old trees at Hung Cun Monastery. To do this we would have to pass a designated monkey area. I told him about what happened earlier and he said he would be ready with knock out a monkey with rocks in his hands and pocket. That he had experience with this on Huang Shan earlier in his trip before coming to Emei. He said that all you have to do is have rocks in your hands and make sounds with them. The monkeys will stay away from you when they hear the sound or see that you have rocks.
These monkeys seemed more like apes they didn't have monkey tails and they didn't have baboon noses but they were the size of monkeys in the shape of apes. It started to rain. Upon entering this area of the mountain there were peanut stands selling food for you to feed to the monkeys. There are also workers at this area who had sling shot to aim at the monkeys who are very good at going for tourist bags. A lady with a shopping bag of snacks experienced a grab and run by the monkeys. She was not injured but she screamed and all the park workers ran and aimed shots at the monkey who was successful with rewards of the theft. Something is very wrong with this picture here, encourage the sales of peanuts by feeding the monkeys with it, this encourages the monkeys to go for humans with food on them, and it encourages monkeys getting attacked with rocks flying out of sling shots.
We passed the monkey area to reach the area where these special frogs are found. We were both on an adventurous search. These frogs are said to be only two inches long and are known for the sac they have over their mouth to enable breathing under water. Sounds cool huh! Well, we tried hard looking in the water and also under foliages, we did not spot these cool looking frogs. We did end up seeing beautiful birds flying here and there with amazing colors and patterns that I have never seen before. I like watching birds and these were beautiful birds who flew over our heads and hung out on the rocks over the river bed. It was fun, in the rain and all.
This part of Sichuan reminds me of Taiwan, lush, green, humid, and beautiful. There are mini waterfalls, creeks that ran through beautiful sceneries, crystal clear water, and lots of interesting things of nature worth taking the time to stop and look at.
I realized Andreas only picked up 30% of my English. He was a gentle, polite, quiet kind of fellow who appreciated the fascinating details that the nature provides. I enjoyed his company. At one point he picked up a butterfly who had one wing stuck onto the wet ground to put it aside for safety until its wings dried enough to fly. I was amazed at such care and regard for nature and all its creatures he showed and wondered if this applied to his meals.
Andreas had an elevation meter reader on him and he was able to see how high up we were. It was his way of figuring out where we were and how long we would take to get to places because distance on the map can be off but the elevation of the mountains are usually correct. What a handy tool to have and I think I would like to add that to my backpacking kit. I wonder if they sell this at REI or is it a German thing?
We made it to Hung Cun Monastery where these old trees are suppose to be very old and amazing. Well, that really was not the case. There were tress labeled for its kind. They were old but not as old and ancient as we thought they would be. It wasn't a big disappointment but it didn't hit the spot either. It didn't live up to the hype.
At Hung Cun Monastery I met a monk who liked being a monk and liked cultivation. He lit incense by the hour, bowed, circumambulated, and sat by the alter to hand write a sutra. He had a peaceful smile on him, he was someone who minded his own business and did not turn the sanctuary into a circus show. It was quiet there because there was no one there. it's too far and high up. I like the quietness.
Andreas had the plan of walking all the way to the west and then heading south down the mountain to Bao Guo Si. Well, it turned out the map is just relative and it took a lot longer than he thought. It was dinner time and we were hungry so we stopped by a food stand that was closing up and ate 14 yuan worth of persimmons, potatoes, and tofu. But the shop keeper charged us 20 yuan instead of 14 with a wide grin on her face. We paid for it anyways even though we were being cheated. Both Andreas and I were tired and didn't want to deal with it. The light was disappearing and we picked up our pace in heading down the mountain in hopes of finishing before all the light goes away. Well, it was dark, pitch black dark and we were still on the trail. At the point we had to slow down big time because we could not see at all. Neither one of us had lights on us for some reason. I really didn't enjoy being in the dark. There were weird sounds coming out of the mountain, like groans, and shrieks. We both heard it, it wasn't just me. They were sounds we did not recognize as originating from animals. They were more like sounds of the creatures or spirits of the night. We didn't like it and convinced each other it may just be water in the mountain moving through or something of that sort. We ended up walking in the dark with my cell phone as the flash light. This last part of walking in the dark with the very dim light coming out of my cell phone screen was stressful for the both of us. We made it out of the trail at 7pm. Andreas and I bid our goodbyes and went our separate ways.
