Day 18 - Leshan to Xichang, Changing landscapes, changing seasons

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What can I write about today. Well, for one thing, we spent ten hours on the road. And like most days, we experienced winter and summer within a twelve hour period. We woke up early, wanting to check out of our smelly digs and hit the road by 8:00am. We knew it was going to be a tough one today. Thus far, I must say that China has created one amazing network of expressways, second to no country I know of. That said, there are numerous provinces that have yet to be reached, and access is typically through what they call national roads. Today's national roads reminded me of the roads through the Atlas mountains. The poor little MX 5 was tossed about like one of those American salads. One stretch of road, about 20km long took me about 90 minutes to navigate. But as is typical of this trip, the effort always has a payoff, and todays payoff was once again me gunning it down the twisties. I don't think I know any sportscar that is as much fun to drive through twisties than the honest little MX 5. Yes there are all sorts of exotics, but you are always going to be worrying about inevitable scrapes and knicks. On the other side of the Sichuan mountains, we entered a village full of restaurants selling one thing, yellow beef hot pot. I'm not actually sure what yellow beef is, but it tastes like beef that might have been jerkied before being stewed. We left dissapointed.

By now we'd entered the land of the Yi Tribes, and suddenly found ourselves on one of the most beautiful highways in the world, the road to Xichang. Unfortunately by the time we arrived at Qionghai Lakeside Hotel, it was already dark. We had a great dinner though, and exhausted from the day's drive, we retired early. Apologies since the photos on this blog pale in comparison to the past blogs. Most of these were taken by me while driving.

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