The first 100km was kind of boring, nothing happened. Than we reached "the 12 turn", where in the 7th turn a truck carrying bamboo was stuck. We looked at the situation and figured out than we can pass under the ropes which are stabilizing the truck. The manoeuvre was successful so we were on our way carrying an old local lady as a hitch-hiker who just wanted to get to the next village but his bus was stuck in the 7th turn for hours now. We didn't even reach the last turn when our driver decided to go over a rock on the middle of the road... I was yelling at him to break, but it was too late. He was probably thinking that he is driving a Landcruiser instead of a VW Jetta. So we got out of the car, and pushed it off the rock. And we've got luck again, no major parts were broken.
And another boring hour passed by except that we were really pissed when we had to pay the same amount of road toll for 5km as we did for the 180 on the way to Jizhaigou. BTW we are spending almost the same amount of money on road tolls and parking as on gasoline, which is quite cheap, less than 5yuan/liter (0.65 USD/liter). And one must pay for the really bad roads as well... I guess for the reparations which we have never seen...A boring hour has passed again once we suddenly had to stop because of some cars lined up in front of us. And a strange dust cloud was coming into our direction. Guess what! A small part of the cliff has fallen on the road in front of us about 100m away a minute ago (we could even see the smoke). The road is completely blocked...
We asked around what to do. The locals are calling the police, etc. and an excavator arrives within half an hour. Wow! That's quite good. But as we see no one touches the fallen rocks. We wonder why... Another hour passes but still nothing but small rocks are falling every 5 minutes from the cliff.
Eating Chinese junk food :-)And than suddenly a huge part of the cliff goes down, and people start to run away from it. And a huge dust cloud approaches us covering the cars with dirt...
Now we figured out what they were waiting for. These guys know what to do. But as the cloud disappears we notice that instead of 1-2m of debris on the road we have about 4 to 6m. We guess it's gonna take some time to clear the road so we try to make some photos from the other side of the nearby river. But the police-lady at the bridge tells us we cannot carry the camera over the bridge we must leave it behind. We have never figured this out why as we could take photos in front of the cliff with another policeman next to us. So we decide to buy a beer for us and for the driver as the cleanup should take a couple of hours. By the time we finish the beer and start walking back to out car we hear some people cheering. The road is clean within one and a half hours! Incredible!
Now we figured out what they were waiting for. These guys know what to do. But as the cloud disappears we notice that instead of 1-2m of debris on the road we have about 4 to 6m. We guess it's gonna take some time to clear the road so we try to make some photos from the other side of the nearby river. But the police-lady at the bridge tells us we cannot carry the camera over the bridge we must leave it behind. We have never figured this out why as we could take photos in front of the cliff with another policeman next to us. So we decide to buy a beer for us and for the driver as the cleanup should take a couple of hours. By the time we finish the beer and start walking back to out car we hear some people cheering. The road is clean within one and a half hours! Incredible!
Found it dead, lying on the street :-(
We are on the road again, but not for long. Because when we passed thru the temporary road created on the fallen rocks our driver was going to fast and managed to touch down the bottom of the car where something must have been cut by a sharp rock. Our driver didn't notice that but when we looked back we have seen a line after us. I'm checking the fuel level and the water temperature every 30 seconds... The temperature is OK, but we are loosing fuel rapidly. We manage to reach the next village, about 3km away, but half a tank of fuel is lost. Zhang Lin calls for help and luckily he finds a car repair shop 100m away from where we stopped. The guys fix the broken pipe within 5 minutes for 10 yuan (1.4 USD)!!!! Good surprise again.Around 5pm we reach the state highway to Chengdu, about 120km left, so nothing can stop us know, we think. But after 10km the highway is closed for no reason, and we have to take a secondary road. And we face a couple of problems on the toll gate, firstly when we pull into the lines we notice that the sky is basically black because of bees. Well we hope none of them make into the car until the driver gives out the magnetic card which we received when we entered the highway and the money to the cashier. But our card is broken, and a long discussion begins between our driver and the people at the toll gate of course with the window down. People are honking as hell behind us and bees are trying to get in... After about 5 minutes we are free to go again and no bees made into the car!
We arrive to Chengdu around 8pm, exhausted, dead hungry. We manage to find a good restaurant just behind Traffic Hotel and the bus station with red chairs, with pictures of food on the wall, and with an English-speaking waitress! We had also checked out the hiker's store just next to the hotel, and managed to buy some discounted jackets, a backpack, and sleeping bags at a reasonable price. Non-discounted stuff seems to be expensive here as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment