Friday, December 4, 2015

September 23, 2015 Honguyan to Chengdu

Today was a splendid ride through beautiful mountain valleys.  The roads had enough curves to keep the riders happy.  The day's ride dropped in altitude more than 3,000 meters, down to 600 meters above sea level.  We left the Tibetan area of China, and rode down into Sichuan, and southern China.  The route followed rivers most of the way.

 The waters were slow and meandering on the Tibetan Plateau, gaining volume and speed as we went.


 Lower down the waters traveled faster over the rocks until...



...hydroelectric dams paused the rush down to the sea.


 The mountains towered over our downhill route, at times leaving only enough room for the road and the river.



We noticed a change in the architectural details of the homes as well.  Along with lots of prayer flags, the upper valley houses are mostly of stone and have interesting painted window features.




 The lower valley towns don't have the window feature, but are somewhat larger.


The road was great almost all day; only one bridge outage and a landslide.  I've often wondered it the steep slopes are secured well enough.  I guess not - at least in this instance.  The townspeople were out with buckets and shovels to clear the rocks and soil.

 Early afternoon we rode past the town of Wenchuan, only an hour's ride from Chengdu.  It was the site of a devastating earthquake in May of 2008 that killed more than 100,000 people.



The whole town and surrounding area was rebuilt in the last 7 years...



...except for one portion of the national road.  So....Yay!  We get to go on the freeway!

A truck full of bok choy.

Even when we are allowed on the freeway, there are places we, apparently, are not allowed to travel.  The group was on an elevated roadway where traffic was all but stopped - except for a bus lane.  Which, of course, we decided was a perfect place for 10 large motorcycles.  Oops - we see cops.  Sp we quickly jumped back into the car lanes.  Suddenly, all lanes of traffic were stopped.  We were about 5 car lengths away from the police officer.  We wait...and wait...no one is approaching us, so when we see traffic exiting to our right, we paddle over to the exit and go down to the next road.  We catch a glimpse of a traffic cop on a radio as we descend.

Soon all traffic is stopped again.  After about 5 minutes, a very angry little man in a police uniform approached our bikes and began to remove keys from the ignitions!  Whoa!  Yingchu did her best to settle the situation.  Our infraction was not driving in the bus lane, but just our presence (motorcycles) on this particular section of road is NOT allowed.  Who knew?! - there certainly wasn't any sign that we noticed.

Eventually, Yingchu explained that we were hurrying to the local hospital, where there was another booster dose of rabies vaccine for Boz.  The little police man was still quite perturbed with our group. However, he gave our keys back but took all of our Chinese drivers licenses.  We were free to go to the hotel, but John and Yingchu must go to the police station to face further reprimands before we can get the drivers' licenses returned.  Good thing we are staying in Chengdu tomorrow.

The rest of our ride to the Shang-ri-la hotel was uneventful - and Boz got to the hospital for his booster shot in time.

Chengdu is very near the natural habitat for Pandas, and has several Panda centers.  Tomorrow we will go to cuddle a baby panda - one year old.

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