Fellow Virtual Travelers,
Surprise! We are on the mountain and have better wi-fi in our rooms than what we had at the base of the mountain!
Being 14 hours ahead of Colorado time, we are now going to bed on Thursday, April 24th. Yesterday, we visited a bank in Shiyan City for money exchange and then sent the luggage with Victor and the driver up the mountain in a small pickup. We kept only our backpacks with camera equipment with us. Victor sent us to buy our own Wudangshan bus tickets that are good as long as we stay on the mountain.
Rode the bus up to the transfer station, caught another bus and rode to the Wuyaling Parking Lot where Victor met us. Our hotel contains 4 rooms. A small restaurant on the first floor, then stairs (very narrow, I might add) that take you to the first floor hotel room, again up to the second room and finally up to the third (currently unoccupied) room.
The rooms are very small (the space at the foot of the beds is about a foot, so you have to walk through sideways) and are about 10 wide by 20 feet long. White tile covers the walls, floor and ceiling. You step up two stairs to the bathroom which is Chinese style. There is a small water basin in one corner on a table, a pit for the toilet with a flush handle on the wall, our own hot water heater hangs on the wall that is tied into a water spigot (to fill up the water kettle to boil water) and a hand held shower head.
Victor's school building and office space is just down the street a couple of doors. We met with Victor and his students for two hours this morning to discuss aspects of the book project, show him a sample movie Dennis had put together and present gifts of books. One of those books is a prototype that Dennis created in iPhoto and sent to Apple for printing. Part of the current printing experiments includes the use of 3D photography that our co-traveler Karl does. It seems that the four of us are on the same path to capture the mystical history, legends and myths of Wudang martial arts to share with the English speaking world!
Tomorrow we must figure out the details of getting laundry done (and in this humidity, dried)!
We've not had time to download pictures yet, but promise to send some new pictures your way soon! The mystical Wudang mountains have been shrouded in constantly changing fairyland mists - a testament to the spirit of this mountain range! Attached is a picture of one of the Wudangshan peaks taken on our 2012 trip to this mountain range.
Blessings,
Dennis&Anita