After breakfast The Wandelgek checked out of the Beihai Hotel and after hiring a potter to bring the largest backpacks to the cable car station, he started a 4th walk together with his guide Louise.

Morning walk toward the Monkey-gazing-at-the-Sea

The Unified Pine Tree (2)

After a short walk he reached the Unified pine tree again and had another look at it. This time he arrived at the tree from the opposite direction and the pathways there were more elevated. …

The tree or at least its heaviest branches were being supported by iron poles …

The next part of the walk was a climb in the direction of the Monkey-gazing-at-the-Sea …

These were some of the last views of this magnificent mountain …

There was a bit of early morning fog, which was dissolving quickly as the sun got hotter …

Slowly the view was getting cleaner…

The Wandelgek decided to slow down and not go all the way up to the Monkey. There was really no point to do so, because the sea of clouds was still missing.

Instead he took his time at some of the view points on the way up.

The beautiful rock formations seen from those viewpoints, from another angle then he had seen them before, were amazing as were the little gardens of pine trees below those rock pinnacles …

Then it was time to descend. The porter who had carried the bags had phoned Louisa to come to the cable car station and pick up the bags, because he was needed in the kitchen of the hotel restaurant to help preparing dinner.

So we walked toward the cable car station, meanwhile enjoying the views …

At the cable car station, The Wandelgek paid the friendly porter who quickly left for the hotel. Then he entered the cable car and the steep descend began …

The top area looks a lot more rocky while toward the foot of the mountain there is more green vegetation…

After the cable car, there was a section with the bus, before arriving where the cars could come. The taxi needed some time to arrive and this allowed The Wandelgek to go into the:

Visitor Center

The visitor center was explaining a lot about the UNESCO World Heritage Site and the fact that it also was a UNESCO Biosphere Park as well. Also interesting were the many rock types exhibited and The Wandelgek’s interest was specifically triggered by a rock named Limburgite. In petrology, limburgite is a dark-colored volcanic rock resembling basalt in appearance, but containing normally no feldspar. The name derives from the type locality the Limberg or the Limburg, close to Sasbach am Kaiserstuhl in Baden-Württemberg, where they occur in the well-known rock of the Kaiserstuhl.

In the southeast of The Netherlands and the north east of Belgium are now the provinces of Limburg and used to be the Duchy of Limburg. The Wandelgek was born there and also knew about the Limburg village/town in Germany named Limburg an der Lahn, but he never heard of the Kaiserstuhl before. It seems there is a castle ruin at this Kaiserstuhl rock, named Limburg. The name appears in more locations than The Wandelgek had thought.

All the way down

As the taxi arrived, The Wandelgek drove all the way down the mountain into the valleys of this part of Anhui. See my next blogpost for that visit …