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Beautiful dead tree
Should watch in full size! Hello again,
Woke up early in the morning again for another bus ride. This time it's 13 hours, to the famous nature reserve called Jiu Zhai Gou. This reserve is known for
its lakes and waterfalls, with incredible colors and clear waters. A part of the movie "Hero" was filmed there, with the scenery of the mountains and the trees reflecting from the blue lakes.
Itai didn't want to go in that direction, so we separated. I went with an Israeli couple, Guy and Sharon, and with another Israeli girl, Gila (from the trip to Deqen).
The road was being rebuilt, so the traffic was going through a small side road, which made the ride even more enjoyable.
We arrived at 21:00 to the gated of the park, and had to find a place to sleep. Guy and Sharon made a reservation to a place, and we went there. The hotel didn't really know what they were talking about, and had no rooms for us.
While they tried to figure out what is going on - I took a look at the souvenir shop in the lobby. At once a local girl arrived to the counter with "hello, buy?". So I
stepped away, and she left, going back to her friends who were playing cards. I went back to look at some stuff - and she came back. And them I decided to have some fun - we just drove her crazy, sending a person to the counter whenever she left it. For 15 minutes she was walking from the counter to the cards table and back, refusing to understand that we don't really want to buy anything. I was laughing with tears.
After they gave up on the hotel - we went to another place near the bus station (try to explain to a Chinese taxi driver that you want to go to the bus station at night because there is a hotel there, while he explains to you that there are no buses at that time).
Anyway - we went to sleep...
In the morning we went to the park. It is one of the most famous tourist spots in China, and goes without saying - it's full of Chinese.
Since it's the end of the dry season (= winter) some lakes were empty and others were low. But still - the views were amazing. we walked there for
hours between the lakes and the waterfalls, with each one of them sparkling with a different color, and reflecting a different mountain. I don't think the pictures can really show how it really looks.
Since I have a strong feeling to the movie "Hero" (because of some crazy friends I have at home), I had to try and recapture the movie. I took a bamboo, put on my headband, and went down to one of the lakes to have some sword fights. You can see the results...
Another funny thing they had there was praying wheels (yes, we are back in the Tibetan area, I forgot to mention) that were spinning automatically using the water flow... This is what I call cheating on Buddha, but what do I know?
We returned to the hotel hungry and tired, just to have one of the worst meals I had in China.
From there we wanted to go to another park, called Huanglong, which was supposed to be close by. There were no buses to it, and the taxi drivers said it's 3 hours away. Gila decided to pass and leave, and the three of us decided to hit the road early in
the morning.
We woke up at 6:00 and drove to Huanglong. It's another park that is supposed to have lakes and waterfalls, but different. It has lakes that are built of many small ponds that are divided with thin terrace walls.
The park has a route of 4 km up and 4 km down. Every 300-400 meters there is a sign saying something about the lake or the waterfall that is supposed to be there - but it's the dry season, so it was all empty! We heard from people who were here just a few days before us that the last lake is nice, so we kept going. The last one was actually beautiful, even though it wasn't completely full. It was worth the whole thing.
While we were going down - it started raining, and it got real bad when we left the park. Once again - no buses from this place, and what is your bargaining abilities with taxi drivers when it's raining outside?
So we took a taxi to Songpan, a town where most people go horse trekking. I didn't want to do it, and bought a ticket for the next day back to Chengdu. Guy
and Sharon stayed there.
When we went to have dinner, at a tourists restaurant, they saw that we were Israelis. Apparently this place is quite like the places I know from South America, and the people in that restaurant know to say "Shalom, Ma Kore Gever, Sababa, etc." There were Hebrew signs all over the place too. So we ordered our dinner, and they put on some music. Then the guy comes to us, smiles, and says "Mashina!". And we were eating to the sounds of Mashina's live show CD... Was really nice after such a long time.
I don't have them on my iPod :-(
R.
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anonymous
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me think u brain dead!!
me at lake...me at lake...me hero...me at lake...need I say more? - hefetz