Saturday, April 19, 2014
Today we headed to Dàlǐ, which was 280kms (174 miles) north. Although the road continued to wind through mountains valleys but was remarkable fast. There are bridges over the valleys and long tunnels through the mountain. There was quite a bit of construction going on and we had to wait for traffic very so often, but all-in-all it was not too bad. Even the slow trucks did not create too many problems. Stephen is learning a new driving style and is getting better at over-taking on blind corners, which unfortunately is a necessary skill here in Yunnan province.
About 60 kms (40 miles) before Dàlǐ we decided to leave these newer and faster road to join a slower more mountainous road that happened to pass through several small villages. We did this mainly because our GPS did not know about the better road. But we were rewarded with a view of rural life. We saw villagers out in the fields working the crops and others laying wheat across the road where the road traffic would help to separate the chaff from the grain. It is always nice to take the back roads and this is something we should do more often.
Dàlǐ is a big place, with both a new town and an old town. We passed through the new town and got a little caught in traffic, but it was not too long before we arrived at the old town. We parked and found a closed wifi network protected by the easy to guess “12345678” password allowing us an hour of internet before the other convoy members showed up.
Lun found us a very reasonably priced hotel about a kilometer from the edge of the city walls of the old town. We quickly dumped our bags and boarded the local #1 bus to head off and see the Three Pagoda’s tourist site. We got to the site late which meant it was pretty deserted and we could enjoy it in relative peace. The main tower of the Three Pagodas dates back to 800AD. But the rest of the site was modern and not hugely inspiring. We walked back to the old city for a little sight seeing before the sun went down and to find dinner.
The old town has some lovely houses but it also has lots of tourists and lots of shops selling all kind of junk for the tourists. Overall we liked the old town, as it is a living and working place with people going about their daily lives. Dinner was nice and we caught up with Kim and Vaughan after we had eaten. We were still pretty exhausted so walked back to the hotel for some much needed sleep.
Sunday, April 20, 2014
We got to sleep in until 7:40am, wonderful. Our ¥60 (USD $10) room worked out well.
We were excited to head back to the old town in search of our first latte in China. We failed. There were coffee shops, but none were open at 8:30 in the morning. As we returned to Sterlin a little disappointed, we spied a parking inspector less than 30 seconds away. We would have got a ticket, or more likely would have been clamped. Now that would have really made our day. So we felt better not getting a coffee.
We hit the road North and in the direction of Lìjiāng.
