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Ok so I'm not actually in Songpan anymore. But, as I'm sure you have noticed I'm a wee bit behind in my bloggin. (Without Kaitlin reminding me I tend to neglect things) So, After Cheng du it was Songpan. A nice little town in the mountains close enough to the tibetan boarder that it was basically in Tibet without having to go through the hassel of actually getting a visa.
The down side is that this is the area of the past earthquake and the road to get here was just recently opened up again. There is earthquake damage everywhere, and relief housing next to the road. The road itself, is well,...kinda a road, makeshift bridges have been built, and there are now many a detour through towns. And I had no idea you could just drive over landslides,...but apparently you can! Now, as everyone knows I have a certain luck when it comes to public transport in China and this was no different. The 8 hour bus ride stretched to about 12, but really I expected that. What I didn't count on was the swarms of bees. You see, along this road was a convoy of trucks carrying bee hives...yes bee hives. The bees swarmed around these trucks and as they moved along they left thousands of them flying behind. So you had trails of bees left for miles along the highway. (and highway is a losely used term here) Add to that we also had to stop for an accident..when a bulldozer backed into a car. The protocal for accidents by the way is ...everyone get out of their vehical, and look at the crash. Talk amongst yourselves for a bit, and then for a bit more...until the cops come, and look at it,...and look at it...and talk amongst themselves, then direct traffic around it...about a 2 hour process.
So...I fianlly reached Songpan...There I went on a nice little two day horse trek to a "hot springs" (their hot springs stays at 21 C all year round...yeah?) I got to ride a cute little pony I named Jack. He liked to bite everything that moved, especially the horses in front of him.
After that was a trip 2 hours even further north to natural heratige site, called Jiuzhaigou. That's pronounced Jew- Jai- Go. Interesting huh? It was a beautiful site, filled with clear blue lakes and waterfalls. And since the road just opened there was practically no one there. The place was like a ghost town. I was literally the only one in the whole hotel I stayed at. It was REALLY weird. Ok so, then I made the long bus ride back to Cheng du. I was thinking that it couldn't be any worse then the trip up, right? I mean come on what can top BEES? Plus we were making great time, so I even thought we might get there when we were supposed to. Should have known better. No bees...but instead there was a landslide, right across the road. This time we got to wait while the bulldozers cleared the way. And again following Chinese protocal, everyone got out to watch, as the dozers kept clear a path and the rocks kept sliding down. Finally a wee bit of a path was cleared...(with some rocks still sliding down) but the cops deemed this good enough and motioned everyone through. So,....I think I should just start walking everywhere I go...what do you think?
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