Day 13 - Twin Blowouts in Sichuan

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I'll spare the details of last night's farewell for Stel T and just mention that I don't think we have ever laughed so much in our lives. The night involved a number of China junkies from around the world whom we met in this hip Terracotta themed pub, and a Japanese import by the name of "Ping Pong Pang".

I think we finished around 3:00am and said our farewells to Stel who needed to catch a plane this morning.

Woke up at 8:30am and headed to Antique Street to see if I could find a 1/4th scale replica of the Emperor's charriot like the one we saw a day earlier at the Tomb shop.

Then the team grouped up at 10:30 am for the 580km drive to Jiangyou in Sichuan province. This road is through gorgeous green mountain passes and involved a huge number of tunnels and bridges.

About 300km into the journey disaster struck with the Landcruiser having a blowout at 120kph. A deftly quick tyre change and we were off again. Just 5 minutes later the MX 5 suffered a blowout. Although I had a spare, the support car had to take the spare and the rim to the nearest town garage to be fitted. During the wait, the police stopped to check out Lily's uniform which they seemed to love. Two hours later we were back on the road only to have the headlights fail on the support car. We spent 11 hours on the road today, and I enjoyed every minute.

Anyone thinking of a roadtrip across China should seriously consider having a support car. I'd probably be sleeping in my car tonight if I hadn't had one.

We arrived at the hotel and headed straight to the nearest restaurant to have the real Sichuan Mapodoufu which fullfiled my expectations.

Fun day, but we all miss Stel.

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Comments

[Stella]

Following you from Shanghai now and soon from Manchester! Missing you all and hope you enjoy Jiuzhaigou tomorrow I am so jealous! PING PANG PONG!