Day 10: Jiuzhaigo

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Lets see... what has happened since my last entry...

On Friday the 25th we went to see the Terracotta Warriors, which is about a 1 hour bus ride from Xi'an. For those not familiar with them, they were one of the greatest archeological finds ever. I think they were discovered in the late 70's (I should know this...) but I do remember that they are 2200 years old. Just google it if you're really into the history. Basically it is an army of thousands of life sized clay warriors, with horses, weapons, the whole schebang. Each of the warriors is unique, and it has been suggested that they were modeled after the faces of real warriors.

I'm glad we saw them, BUT both steph and I agreed that they did not live up to the hype. Both of us had been pestered by so many people before we left, who insisted that we HAD to see the terracotta warriors if we were going to china. But honestly, they are more impressive on TV. What they don't tell you is that most of the warriors are shattered in to bits. They are working on reconstructing them, but it is a slow process. There are hundreds, not thousands, of reconstructed warriors. They still have a lot of work to do. And the whole thing is just so commercialized... they make you walk past hundreds of shops on the way to the exhibit, each one selling miniature terracotta warriors or trying to get you to pose for a picture with a lifesized warrior. I don't know about steph, but I was much more impressed by the 51,000 buddhas carved in Yangshong caves.

On saturday we took a flight to Jiuzhaigo airport, which was a good hour cab ride from Jiuzhaigou park. The drive was beautiful, lots of mountains, rivers, and tibetan villiages. You can immediately tell the tibetan villages from far away from the multicolored prayer flags that they fly out front.

There is a small town just outside of Jiuzhaigou park, and we got a room at one of the hostels. We decided to be adventurous and try one of the local restaurants for an early dinner. I ordered pepper chicken, which ended up being chopped up chicken (lots of bones), sauteed with 3 different kinds of extremely spicy peppers. Also we ordered sechuan style bean curd, which ended up being tofu. It was good, but super spicy. I guess sechuan is famous for that.

Sunday we went into Jiuzhaigou park. I noticed steph already raved about it in her blog (travelerbooty.blogspot.com) so I won't repeat much here. It was amazing, well worth the effort and money to see. One of the most beautiful places we have ever seen. Check out our pictures on flickr (i forget the link, but search "people" on flickr.com for "gabanie")

Right now we're actually in a small town called songpan, which is a 3 hour bus ride south of jiuzhaigo (I started this blog in jiuzhaigou, but I'm just finishing it now). We are about to leave for a 3 day, two night horseback ride to a place called Ice Mountain. From the pictures, it seems like it was aptly named. Gotta go get on my horse!

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