Category: PENNY TO HELSINKI

Todays drive started out looking placid and mundane as it was to be 500 kilometres on the Jingkun Expressway.  What a surprise it turned out to be.

Most times when we enter an expressway the toll lady can’t make the decision whether Penny should be allowed on the expressway, so there is a phone call to the office and after some delay we are given the ticket. Today’s delay was a little longer as the console operator asked the police to come and check all our paperwork.  After about ten minutes of paper checking, we were thankfully on our merry way north.

On crossing the Yangtze for the last time this trip we headed up the valley of one of the rivers feeding it. This valley was narrow and the freeway seemed to be just all bridges and tunnels. Although the drive was freeway, the scenery was spectacular with all the farming coming right up to the edge of the road in places and mountains lining the valleys.

After the lunch stop for road side food we entered a part of the drive everyone was amazed at. For 45 kilometres of the drive was just bridges and tunnels.  The valley was so narrow in places that the freeway was elevated over the stream below. The most interesting part was that twice we did almost complete circles actually inside the mountain!!! – to emerge from the tunnel to be under the bridge that we entered the tunnel on but 100 meters lower down the mountain!! That piece of road was the greatest piece of design and engineering a lot of us have ever seen. For the day we most likely drove about 70km in tunnels; with the longest being 10km and many in the 2 – 3 km length.

As the day progressed and we approached Yaan for the night which is the area were Pandas were first discovered in the wild. We drove through mountain sides of their favourite bamboo..and hope to see some Pandas in the next couple of days.

Tomorrow is Panda day and the start of the climb to the high country.

I’ll get to the havoc later; so let’s start with the hills and valleys.

We departed Lijiang in the rain to climb out of the town to the east towards our overnight stop in Panzhihua. We came over the top of the first range for the day to almost clear skies and looking down into the Yangtze valley again as it made it way to the ocean. The Yangtze was raging along 1200 metres below as we made our way down the provincial road to the river crossing below, with the drive interrupted buy a couple of stops for photo shoots. The town at the river crossing was almost a ghost town, most likely due to the mine on the hill above the town having not worked in a long while. I guess it lead to the death of the town – as mine closures do the world over.

The hill climbing and valley views were the norm for the rest of the day with amazing changes in agriculture from valley to valley. The road-side stalls in one valley would all be selling grape and stone fruit the next something completely different. We crossed one range to find the stalls all selling mangos, then all of a sudden we were in Mango Valley so to speak. Every farm in the valley was growing mangos unless it was flat enough for rice, with all the mangos on the trees each in a paper bag for protection as they ripened.

In this valley as Maurie and I pulled up for a lunch-break a young man came out of the house across the road and started talking to us in English. During our chat he was also telling us that he worked in Lijiang which is a five hour bus ride away every second week.

About 45 kilometres from town is were the havoc started.  The road turned to a broken concrete track with road works in progress. As I was going down a hill meeting a bus the woman that had changed her mind from passing the bus, was in the process of pulling back in for me to get through; when for some reason only known to her, she stopped as I was about to squeeze through. Her stopping lead to me just touching her back corner, but the wheel nut on the front left wheel grabbed  her rear guard and gently removed it from the back of her car.  I didn’t know quite what to do and with no way of communicating, I continued on out of the place.

This was the start of the slight havoc.

About five kms further through the road works Garry was pulled up with some upset locals waving a shovel and a crowbar at him. As we drove past and continued on our merry way it suddenly occurred to me what it was most likely about what I had accidentally done – so I radioed Garry and let him know. Alim our guide turned up with Reg at about the same time, so I phoned him and let him know what had happened. In the process the police turned up as well. While all this was happening behind me, I was pulled up by a policeman as I entered Panzhihua. I quickly phone Alim to see what was happening and found that it had all been sorted; so after the police with me had confirmation of the resolution; I was free to go. I was told later in town the resolution was that I was to go back tomorrow to sort it out, or pay the woman 1000 yuan. To save the trouble and delays Ross paid the woman the money on the spot.  All sorted. Needless to say when everyone arrived at the hotel a bit later in the day, it was my shout for the cold drinks.

All in all it was a eventful day in many ways.  Hindsight tells me I did it all wrong; but what is done is done. Tomorrow is another day and with new adventures with different excitement!!!!

Today we departed Lijiang for a day trip to Tiger Leaping Gorge in light drizzle and a forecast of showers all day. We drove over the mountain range to put us in the valley of the Yangtze River with the clouds lifting. As we followed it downstream toward the gorge, the clouds lifted to almost the top of the huge mountain ranges either side. While following the river I realised that the river was almost at the highest flow for the wet season which should make the rapids spectacular.  We paid our entry fee at the gate and all set of to the car park for the first Rapids which has Tiger Leaping Rock in the centre of the river.

On the way to the first car park the Peugeot and the older Landcruiser got caught up in a rock fall dislodged by all the rain from last night higher up the mountain side. Everyone was very very lucky with the Landcruiser receiving a broken windscreen and the Peugeot coming off the worst with the front left guard torn off and the wheel damaged.(see attached photos). Garry and others set about removing the guard before attacking it with hammers and blocks of wood to beat it back into some resemblance of shape before reattaching it to the car with teck screws and tape. It was a most impressive repair!  On return to Lijiang,  Peter was able to purchase another spare tyre for the rest of the trip.

After the car was fixed we proceeded to continue the Gorge tour with a walk down to beside the river on a long stair case. When we got down to river level the the noise and the power in the Rapids was breathtaking. A couple of us tried to count the stairs on the way up but soon lost count due to puffing. It was at least 400 or  500, and a real struggle due to 2000 metres elevation. We all got back to the top in various states of exhaustion!!!

The blogs may thin out over the next couple of week as we have 15 days on the road to the north and then west to Kashgar. The Internet may also get more troublesome.

We all arrived in Lijiang in time to go out for lunch. We walked off down the road for lunch at some nice place that Alim chose for us.  After another traditional style lunch for this area, we headed off to visit the old city of the Naxi People who are one of the native people of the area.

We had only being walking a couple of minutes when the heavens opened up on us. In a city without awnings over the side walk the only option was to buy $2.00 umbrellas. I think the rain is a regular event at catching out tourists and locals, as umbrellas are readily available on the street. In Dali the previous day as soon at it started to rain, a woman appeared on the street with a basket of them to sell !!!

The old city is very commercial these days as it is visited by 5,000,000 Chinese tourists every year. The whole afternoon involved a fair bit of walking and some more navigational errors; but we arrived back to the hotel – so all is well.

The drive to Lijiang for Maurie and I was interesting, as our GPS took us a country road instead of the freeway the others used. On the country drive it answered a question for me. For the last few days we had been driving past acres of Tobacco plantations and as an old tobacco farmer I wondered what drying process was used in China? Yesterday I discovered that it was air-dried in sheds. We also drove past Mulberry bush plantation for the growing of mulberry leaves to feed silkworms for the silk factories…..along with changing a flat tyre in the mud in the middle of the road works.

Today we are off to Tiger Leaping Gorge.