Jiuzhaigou Part I: The bus ride

We left the bus station in Chengdu at around 7:30am with a full load of people heading into the mountains. The trip was quite sunny, which warmed the bus immensely. There was an air conditioner, but it was marginally successful at cooling us down. Matters were made worse by the frequent roadblocks, during which the driver would turn the bus (and the AC) off. By the end of the ride, we were quite wet from sweat.

Which brings up the good news – thanks to the liberal use of motion sickness drugs, Rachel was fine for the trip. Her Achilles heal is being hot on long rides, so it amazing that she was not sick.

The bad news, however, was that it was a very long trip. We took the road west from Chengdu, through the mountainous area that was hit by the earthquake last year. I did not think the road was even open, so I was surprised to take that route. For the first 8 hours of the ride, it was non-stop construction. The ‘highway’ was a two-lane road that wound through the mountains alongside a big, churning river. Unlike American highways, the road was devoid of car traffic – most of they way, we saw nothing but buses and big trucks. [The towns we passed through had largely been destroyed a year ago, and so the rebuilding process is ongoing. It was good to see so much work being done.] Traffic was not heavy, so we could have made good time, except the fact that there were dozens of spots where the road narrowed to one lane due to rock falls and construction. This meant delays of anywhere from a few minutes to an hour as we waited to get through bottlenecks.

On the plus side, the mountains were beautiful – towering on either side of the river below crisp blue skies. The river was wide and turbulent, colored brown from sediment running off the mountains. The road, which lacked guardrails, frequently brought us to the brink of its banks. Many a time I hoped and prayed that the driver was vigilant in monitoring our proximity to the edge of the road. I’m glad Rachel sat at the window.

Finally, our journey would have ended about 13 hours after leaving Chengdu….if we were smart about it. We reached Jiuzhaigou around 8pm and began a slow drive through the hotel district. We looked hard for our hotel, but did not see it. Some people got off, but over half remained on. We knew that our hotel was very close the park gate, which we thought was the final destination of the bus. We were wrong. The bus kept going, and as we passed a bend we realized too late that the hotels were all behind us. In front of us was nothing. Darkness. Mountains. Trees. No cars, no people. We drove on. What do we do now, we wondered? Obviously we missed our hotel and we need to go back, but we cannot stop here – there is no taxi in the mountains to take us. So we waited. The bus drove on – 10km. 20km. 30km. 40km. Finally, a good 45 minutes later, we reach Jiuzhaigou County, which was the real final destination. There, we get a cab back. No real harm done, other than losing 100RMB for the cab and arriving over an hour later than we should have. Lesson learned.

More to come on the inside of the park, and pictures!

-alan