Colourful Scenery

Question

_{This is part 41 of the puzzle series Around the World in Many Days. Each part is solvable on its own.}

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Dear Puzzling,

This is a Word Nurikabe puzzle. Shade some cells in the grid. Shaded cells must form one orthogonally connected area, and no 2x2 square can be fully shaded. Each unshaded area forms a snake-like shape that has a start and end point and does not cross or touch itself. (More formally, exactly two cells in each unshaded area have one unshaded neighbour, and all other cells have exactly two unshaded neighbours. Note that this also means there can be no 2x2 square entirely unshaded in the grid.) Write in the given answers into the unshaded areas, each starting at one end point and ending at the other. Answers can be written in any direction. Given letters cannot be shaded, and every unshaded area contains exactly one given letter.

ANTIQUED
CROWN JEWEL
DIG OUT
FRECKLY
FOXY
JUMPING JACK
KIBBUTZ
QUIZ
SHANGHAI
VAMPISH
VEXING

Today I have admired colourful lakes, rivers and waterfalls in a high-altitude nature reserve. Can you guess where I am?

Love, Gladys.

Solve on Penpa+

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Gladys will return in E Rebus Unum.

Answer 1

Gladys is in

Jiuzhaigou

First let's look at

the bottom right. No word has F_K or K_F, so the squares between them must be shaded. The word starting or ending must be FOXY or FRECKLY so must be at least four long.

If it were

FRECKLY then it would have to continue into one of these red cells

and it would touch other letters, so it must be FOXY.

Now let's look

at the top. Similar to before, there are no words with N_K or K_N so we shade between them. There are no words that have S_Z or Z_A so they must be separated by shaded cells. Every shaded cell must connect to others so we can start drawing those out. And we can draw out unshaded cells for as long as a word starting or ending with those letters might be.

And we know

what some of those words must be.

There is no way

to use the given V an N to make VEXING, so can't connect. Nothing starts or ends with N so the cell to the left must be part of it. The shaded cells above it must connect to the left.

Then,

the C in the top left must be CROWNJEWEL. Also, the A in the top right must be part of VAMPISH so our V on the left must be VEXING.

Now we notice

the U on the right cannot connect to either of the K's for JUMPINGJACK so it must be part of DIGOUT. So all of our words are accounted for. There is a little green cell on the bottom left to prevent a 2x2 shaded area and it must connect to one of the existing words. It can only be JUMPINGJACK. Then the upper K must be KIBBUTZ.

From here

it is relatively straight-forward to complete.

Then we

read across the middle row.