With only three months left until my time in China is over, my friends and I are in a frenzy to squeeze the most out of our Chinese experience. During the Labor Day holiday, a friend and I compacted a week long vacation in Yunnan Providence into a four-day break.
Eight months deep into living in China, I am confident in my ability to maneuver through China. The fatality of that mistake came crashing down as soon as I stepped into the Lijiang airport. Already late because of flight delays, our initial plan of hiring a car to take us to the little village at the foot of Tiger Leaping Gorge proved impossible. Right outside the pit-stop terminal was a semi-circle of drivers looking for their tour groups and one bus to Lijiang but no drivers for hire.
We jumped on the bus, figuring that we would be able to catch the “Lonely Planet” confirmed bus to Qiaotou in Lijiang. Except the “bus station” proved to just be a slab of cement between a few buildings in what looked to be the chop-shop portion of town.
The taxis refused to talk to us let alone take us the two hours to the distant village. We were told that the “legendary” bus could be found across the street at Bus Stop 11; however, only a parking lot full of sketchy clown car vans trying to entice us from out their window could be found.
Knowing that we were quickly losing the daylight and that we would need about eight hours to reach our guesthouse on the mountain once we started hiking, we settled on being completely swindled and paid one of the mini-bus drivers to take us the two hours to the foot of the mountain.
Our driver proved to be the right combination of ingenuity and insanity to get us to Qiaotou. We were only twenty minutes into the trip when we came to a jolting stop at a roadblock. The road was the only real path over the mountain that wasn’t an hour out of the way, and that solitary road was completely closed.
Instead of turning around like the other vehicles, our driver put the car in park and went to have a smoke with the construction workers. Trusting his ability to work some quangxi, I laid out in the backseat, turned on my I-pod, and waited.
About fifteen minutes later a smiling construction worker let us through the barrier along with a few dump trucks. We literally flew (with moments of being airborne) along the deserted road until we hit the reason that the road was closed. For some reason, dump truck after dump truck of dirt was being piled in great mounds on the road.
Our escort/local expert/civil engineer conferred with the two cars that also made it through the roadblock (deviously I might add). An agreement was reached. As soon as one of the construction rollers back up, jeep 1, jeep 2, and clown car forged over the steep bank of the mound and drove on the fresh dirt to the other side.
After crossing a narrow crumbling bridge, we reached Qiaotou in the shadow of the mountain. We began our two-day trek up Tiger Leaping Gorge at 12:40PM with seven hours of sunlight remaining and eight hours needed to reach our guesthouse…
No comments:
Post a Comment