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On arriving in Zengchong
The bikes we rode. Each with a driver, passenger + close to 30kg of gear (in my case) strapped on to us. Not the most cosy of arrangements. Part II of the backdoor into Yangshuo.
When Ayelet, Naor and I planned the backdoor route into Yangshuo, we were all in agreement that the whole thing shouldn't take more than about four to five days. The reason for this is that we still had a lot on our plate, as far as plans for China, and none of us wanted to lose too much time travelling this route. We earmarked three villages we wanted to visit on the way: Xijiang, Zengchong and Zhaoxian. After that a stop in Longsheng and on to Yangshuo.
This meant that we had about a day for each place, including travel to the place. The idea, in general, was to leave each morning from the village we had stayed at the previous night and make it to the next one in time to see it a bit before going to sleep. This would mean roughly half a day of travel and another half to see the sights for each place.
For Xijiang, this had worked like a charm. We figured, as long as we set off early, we would make it in time to enjoy the next place.
This morning, we
With the assistance of a cuetip
The lap swimming critter which was my first order of business upon arrival. woke up in Xijiang. For some reason, we all woke up at about quarter past six without an alarm clock. Don't ask me why... Anyhow, we met up with Mr. Yang (the one from the previous post) and after that we planned on hiking in the hills around Xijiang. We figured that catching a bus out of Xijiang at around noon would give us enough time to reach our next destination, Zengchong, before nightfall.
After participating in the English class, we were more or less spent and decided not to hike as we planned. Instead, there was a 10am bus leaving the village. We sat down at the village square and waited for it. The 10 o'clock bus became an 11 o'clock one and finally showed up at around 11:30. We got on. We needed to transfer in Leishan for a Rongjiang bound bus. The stop in Leishan was quite short, and so the only thing I remember about Leishan is the bus station restrooms, which is not such a nice memory at that.
The road from Leishan to Rongjiang, although paved, is one the most winding I've encountered. Add to this the driver's preference for taking turns at a speed which sees half the people on the bus slamming into the other half, and you have your recipe for turning people's faces into various shades of purple. We had about three hours worth of this funpark style slalom.
Here's where things start to get tricky. Zengchong is not exactly traveller friendly. There's no bus going there. In fact, the village from which you get to Zengchong, Wangdong, has no bus service. The chinabackpacker site cautions travellers that Zengchong is not easy to reach without some knowledge of Chinese. And so off we set in search of a ride to Wangdong. At this point in the day, there was a slight feeling of hopelessness. Anyone we asked said there was no way to get to Wangdong without hiring a taxi which would cost around 300Y. Not an option for us. And so we naively began walking with all our gear in the direction of Wangdong knowing full well that it was at least 25km away. We just hoped we could flag someone down and hop on. It was getting late in the day.
Our knight in shining armour turned out to be a weird little Chinese dude with an asthmatic minivan. He was actually driving a lady to the village and quoted as good a price as we could have hoped for. You know what they say about events like these. They're too good to be true. It was.
Beginning the climb up to Wangdong, the engine started wheezing and sputtering even at first gear. Something was clearly wrong. It finally died on us about 10km after taking the turn into the dirt track that leads to the village. With doubtfull prospects of rescue, Naor and I took the initiative and hopped off to lighten the load and push the van's motor back to life. I don't know how but it worked. We just barely cleared the inclines leading to the village without the engine dying out again. To me it remains a mystery how our driver ever managed to get back to civilization with that pathetic excuse for a vehicle. We never did get a discount for all that pushing.
As I mentioned, Wangdong has no bus service, hinting at the poor state of the village. And we were still headed further in, to Zengchong! Slight problem. There are no cars in Wangdong. The track leading to Zengchong is so narrow that trucks can't make it. Darkness was descending and we still had about 6km to cover to reach the village. Walking was not an option. I looked around and saw only one other form of transport that didn't eat carrots. Motorcycles. Naor thought I was joking when I looked at them, but we actually did end up negotiating a ride to Zengchong, one bike for each of us.
We got on the back of the bikes and off we went. This wasn't really in the plan, and I didn't have any protective gear, so the result was that I ingested certain amounts of protein on the way (ie: bugs). Another one lodged in my eye and gave me the most annoying time on the way, swimming laps underneath my eyelid. What must have been about 20 minutes seemed like eternity. We finally reached Zengchong in darkness, sweaty, dusty and ready to go to bed.
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