Whilst in China it is inevitable to leave without having had the opportunity of visiting the famous cities of the country including the mountains where the famous movie Avatar was filmed: Zhangjiajie. The mountains are located in Hunan province. The most affordable way to get there from Zhuhai is by coach and join Internchina´s crew, the agents that organize events for us.
Once in Hunan, it is very important to visit the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park listed in UNESCO´s World Heritage Sites. This park is famous for its pillar-like mountains. The unique landscape was the perfect inspiration for the floating "Hallelujah Mountains" seen in the Avatar movie.
Firstly, the coach took almost 16 hours from Zhuhai to get to Hunan, which sounds pretty long. However, it can be very exciting when lots of interns group together and play different games throughout bus rides.
We left on Sunday night and arrived Monday morning, ready to start exploring. We went inside the park and walked from one end to another, in between the mountains. It was foggy and rainy, so we all had to buy ponchos and umbrellas to stay dry. Most of the ponchos were blue, which actually went great with the Avatar theme.
The second day we actually climbed up the mountain, which was really tough as there were almost 6000 steps and it was quite warm which made it even difficult as I was sweating a lot all the time. However, once on the top of the mountains the views are spectacular; a real treasure to our eyes.
We even enjoyed having lunch at a Mc Donalds at the top of the mountain which was really surprising. As we were walking up the mountain we could see people coming down with Mc Donalds wrappers and this really motivate us to go up quickly as we new about the happy ending.
To go down the mountain we took an innovated elevator that took us right down the mountain in less than 3 minutes. Amazing!
If you interning in China for a decent amount of time don´t forget to get moving around as there are many places to encounter.
