My first impressions of the trip to the top of Yuanjianjie Mountain, which is part of the Zhangjiajie Forest Park, is that a trip in the later afternoon would have been better so the sun wouldn’t be in our face all the time. Better for taking pictures with the sun at your back but it was very cool, the air was crisp, though still a bit hazy and the haze got to be really frustrating on some pictures but a beautiful addition on others. I tried different haze and polarizing filters with little success. I mention the top, you get there by two elevator rides, the second, a very modern double decker model, sending you over 1100 feet up. Because it was a fairly new park, the trails were in excellent shape with sturdy guard rails lining most of the trails and paths.
It is a huge park that they have very well organized with a system of shuttle buses that take you from one point in the park to another and it is quite a large park area that covers about 185 square miles. There are miles of walking trails that are more like wide sidewalks with good solid metal guard rails.
This was a place you could spend days. To the left is the delegation from Vanuatu to the Friendship Forum and in the center, the first lady of Vanuatu, Hanson Mataskelekele, and to her left is an old friend of ours from China, Mr. Xie Yuan.
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