We have a very scenic drive through valleys today, passing dams and waterfalls. As we get higher, the road becomes increasingly troubling and risky for heavy truck travel. The road turns weaves into narrow dirt track overlooking sizable drops at the very near edges. This triggers quite a few ‘ooohs’ and woops, with the truck often wobbling violently as go over potholes.
Eventually, the scenery becomes frost and snow covered. At the peak of the road we are now officially in wild panda country. There are signs saying this, but I am not sure if there were actually any left here. At the Chengdu sanctuary, we learned that the panda’s black and white coat is to camouflage themselves in the snowy forest. This doesn’t explain what they do in the summer and, with them spending all their days eating bamboo and being slow and peaceful, it is not really a wonder that there are not too many left in the wild.
As we descend, the temperature quickly increases and we stop by a river for tonight’s bush camp. It’s a fairly pleasant night, with a smoky and diesel scented camp fire to keep our fingers warm.
We had had another traffic incident today with an angry minibus driver stopping the truck claiming that we had knocked off his wing mirror when we passed him. He certainly was missing a wing mirror, but Kevin, being Chinese, and JC, who finds dust on the joint where the wing mirror was, both know that there may be reason to suspect the drivers motives. Kevin tells us that the minibus passengers were saying that the loss of the wing mirror was the minibus driver’s fault anyway.
When the police arrive to adjudicate, the minibus driver tells the police a different story than the one he had originally given to Kevin. Kevin had furtively recorded the original story with his mobile phone and played this back to the police, which made the minibus driver look very foolish and possibly put him in some trouble. We move on, the stop causing us over an hour delay.
No comments:
Post a Comment