The Flying Horse of Wuwei

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Well it was raining too hard on the night of the Opening ceremony so we didn't head down to the square. We just grabbed beers and watch the telecast in one of the hotel rooms. Luckily we had our Chinese Guide there as our interpretation of events didn't resemble the reality. It was a good night - very impressed with the drummers.... not so impressed with the puppets and the Australian's marching out outfit! We heard that someone was quite badly injured at the final rehearsal for the opening ... but couldn't really work out where that would have been (our guesses about Terracotta Warriors and juggling Pandas didn't eventuate!)

The next morning we headed out early. We were free camping on the way to the most western part of the Great Wall. We stopped at lunch at a place called Wuwei - famous for tombs that housed a miniture set of horses and chariots (the archeologists wisely came to the conclusion that a tomb with a whole lot of horses and chariots would belong to a general). The flying horse of Wuwei is te symbol used for Chinese Tourism (it actually reminded me of Donkey from Shrek!). It was good to have a stretch of the legs as it was quite warm travelling. Back on the truck for another couple of hours until around 6pm, when we pulled off the Expressway to free camp beside a part of the Great Wall. (I tried to climb on top of the biggest part in the photos but I gave up when it started crumbling .... oops). We had dinner over a campfire. It was a really cold night out there so it was a good test of the winter clothing for later in Kyrgyzstan.

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