Sa Pa trek day 1 - Part 1 & 2/ 4

We woke up quite early around 7:30am to finish preparing, get breakfast and get ready for our trek.
In the lobby at 9am sharp, our guide was waiting for us just like planned. Her name was Sai and she was part of the Black Hmong tribes that we were going to visit during our trek. We would also visit the red Zhao.

And we start just like that. We started walking from our hotel and went through Sa Pa city which gave us the opportunity to see what we can look forward too after our trek weekend.
As soon as we left the city,  we are going up a mountain and it was steep! 2 local teenage girls joined our group. We learnt from Sai that this is quite normal. These girls are from remote villages in the mountain and their parents drop them off in the early morning. This way the girls pick some tourist on a trek, accompany them in their hike and when passing by their village, they sell you some of their souvenirs to make money. These 2 girls were 16 and 17 years old. Told us they are finishing school, which we hoped was true.. As we go up the mountain, we take some breaks as we also need to get used to hiking in this weather. It is cooler than what we have been used to. So if we sweat and then stop, we get cold. So we make stops and take off some layer, later out it back on and then off again to try to regulate our temperature 😅
Once it is around 11h30, it is much easier as the weather is quite warm and so we don't risk getting cold anymore.
We basically had to hike up the mountain as them we had to walk down of it from the other side to get to the valley. This toute is usually not taken so much hy toutists who prefer to walk straight down to the valley side from Sa Pa as it is much easier. But with the route she takes us through, yes it is harder but we have an amazing view when arriving on top of the mountain and we pass more remote places. Our Guide Sai is basically wearing sandals shoes by the way while the 2 teenager girls are wearing flip flops 🤣 and us foreigners are highly prepared for it.Read more