Tuesday, April 22, 2014
An easy drive through the mountains. Started off back-tracking down the beautiful toll road before heading up a new valley to Tiger Leaping Gorge on the Yangtze River. It is also essential part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan. Our itinerary always anticipated stopping at the viewpoint of Tiger Leaping Gorge, but had us continuing on in the afternoon. Instead we cashed in one of our “bank days” and decided to drive further down the gorge and spend the night at Tina’s Guesthouse just above middle rapids.
Once we arranged a room for the night, Kim, Vaughan and Stephen headed up on the trail to the “high road”. Really quite nice scenery. The hike was cut short because the plan was to meet back at the guesthouse at 3pm and descend down to the gorge proper. This time Caroline, Coen and Marijke also joined. But the terrain was very steep indeed and not to Caroline’s liking, so about halfway down she sensibly headed back up. The rest of us continued down to see the waters raging through the rapids. Spectacular. We all potted around on the rocks for a while before making the demanding hike back up the steep walls. In the meantime, Caroline made friends with Aren who was from the Netherlands. We all had a nice dinner together.
The day was best captured in photos.
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
Great night’s sleep. Must be the mountain air.
We got some news on our spare parts. They have finally arrived at the hotel in Luang Prabang. So now had to get them to the Land Rover shop in Luang Prabang, who would forward them to the daughter of our guide in Beijing who would then forward them to us. I know, a little convoluted.
