After my free day (and time spent worrying about being bored since I had cancelled my 2-day hike up to Mount Fansipan due to my knee), I was determined to finally get up to the top of the 3,143m (10,311 ft) high peak. When I arrived at the ticket counter for the cable car, the ticket salesman said that it was cold, windy, and misty at this time and that he recommended that I come back later. I walked away and thought about it, but after seeing some other seemingly determined people decide to risk it, I decided to turn around and become one of them. I was fully aware that I might not see anything (and I’ve been terribly disappointed before when visiting mountains twice), but I figured that at least if I went by the cable car and tram and couldn’t see anything, then it wouldn’t be as bad as hiking for two days and not seeing anything.

When I arrived at the first cable car station platform, I was confused about whether I had walked out to the correct place and soon realized that I had gotten out at some other visiting area with a temple and gardens to look at.

It was OK, but this was not what I came here for. I decided that I would at least make it to the very top so that I would always know that at least I had done it while here.

After making it to the top of the correct main platform, I ventured up the stairs and escalators out onto the cold, windy peak. It was, of course just as the salesman had said. After climbing more stairs, I found another small tram that went to the final top spot (there are a few and this area ended up being much bigger than I thought, which is understandable since about 85% of it was covered in mountain fog).

Finally, I had reached the top!

There, I waited with other tourists for any chance of the clouds breaking. At first, I thought it might be hopeless, but as time went on, I became more determined to wait for the moment that conditions might improve. Sure enough, I saw my first momentary break in the clouds and could see some peaks. The fog moved quite quickly, so it was literally a matter of seconds to try and get some good shots. After the first glimpse of the peaks, I was more determined than ever to wait for as many moments as it took to get what I thought would be worthy shots. This continual revealing and shrouding went on for over an hour and resulted in cold, cramped fingers as I gripped my digital point-and-shoot (no, unfortunately, I never had quite enough to buy a real DSLR…yet). Since my camera had been giving me problems for the last few trips, resulting in some images not being readable on my computer, I did what any cautious photographer would do and took a lot of extra photos of each moment possible. It was purely a numbers game.

After I had taken as many shots as I could without completely running down the battery, I started to head down to some of the other parts of the platform to get some views of the other sides. I’m glad I did this and wish that I had done it earlier, but oh well. Then, suddenly, I saw a dreaded message on my camera stating, “Card not initialized.” I panicked and wondered if all my images were now in jeopardy. It wouldn’t let me view any of my photos, so I continued to panic and took out my phone camera. I have used both on past trips because they both can take good photos, but both have problems.

The first photo I took with my phone was of this pagoda wrapped in mist.

As the clouds began to disperse again, I soon saw how much more wonderful a mountain area there was to explore.

Below is a photo of a tree that has been here for five hundred thirty-five years.

After hiking up and down stairs, walking through gusty winds, and feeling the afternoon sun beaming down on me (actually, the beaming turned out to be burning), I felt a real sense of accomplishment.

After I made the ride down and trekked back to my room, I thought about all the images that I had taken at the very top of the peak and wondered if they were salvageable. After putting the SD card into my computer, I soon found out that all those images were now gone and irretrievable! At that moment, I vowed never to use that camera again (which is quite an easy vow to make considering that it wasn’t recognizing the SD card anymore, and therefore I had no choice). As irritated as I was (and still am) about all that time and effort going into getting those second-by-second shots, I couldn’t be that angry considering all of the other nice shots I got later.

As a last taste of what it was like up there, I put together this video montage of footage from the different sites.

Only one more day to go of my Sapa adventure. Stay tuned for the final chapter.