I wanted to explore the area I was in, now i had gotten here, at such difficulty! and so after waking up i wandered to the bus station and found a few very keep chinese people pressing tour guides into my hand, I chose one that covered the area I went to yesterday and after a bit of bargaining jumped into the minibus and away I went, First we went to the ticket office, if you are a person from this province, 10rmb, if you are from outside the province (or country) 100rmb! ouch! The tour guide however happened to have a ticket in her car, and would sell it to me for 80... ah well, a tiny discount I guess!
Inside the entrance was a history of the area, and a frozen riven with a huge lock gate built over it, it was highly sculptured, and a bit weird. In the museum above it though I found it it was artificial. The area had no water at all a couple of hundred years ago, and so they all went up into the hills in the frozen -20 winter and over a couple of years built an artificial canal over to the city from a hundred or so km away! amazing! The museum even had pictures of it, amazing.
After the museum and a wander around, back to the car and up to the mountain I saw yesterday. This time we drove right up to it. As soon as I arrived the driver immediately started recommending I take the chairlift up, walk around, and chairlift it back and get onto the next place, I agreed, then got the cable car halfway up the mountain and walked the rest. I then found a path down the otherside of the mountain so called the driver and told him to meet me at the other side and walked down. The view from the top was beautiful, and a picture I especially like was of a couple sat down halfway up at a rest stop arguing, i got a picture of them looking out over the view and arguing over their relationship, very cute, and the coke bottle was also nicely framed.
There was also a suspension bridge over the gap, which was more than a bit dodgy, and then from the very top a slide, all the way down! However in the ice and snow I decided to give it a wide berth!
The path down was made of rather old and rusting metal paths over some big drops, i got another nice picture looking up one of the spiral stairs and then saw over the valley another path back up the mountain, also made of old metal stairs, and I walked up there to take some more pictures. From halfway up i looked over the valley and saw a frozen waterfall with two huge dragon statues over it, amazing! I really wanted to get near but to get there I had to go through the carpark where I was meeting the driver, and she was waiting!
In the carpark she looked up at me and asked what took so I long, and I told her about the pictures, she obviously thought she could get the £20 days fee out of me with a quick trip and get back home, not the case! I told her I wanted to see the dragon fountain and she tried every excuse to put me off, it was impossible the road was broken, (i saw the bad quality road but it seemed possible), if I went she said it would be too late to go to the final place, it would take 2 hours to get there and back, i said I would try.
I got there in 10 minutes with a bit of quick walking and took some beautiful pictures, the snow path up to be was beautiful too, as well as the empty temple on the way, and when i made it back to the car 25 minutes after leaving the driver ( and the several random chinese interested strangers) were amazed I got there and back so fast!
When I got in the car the driver said it was too late for the last place as it would be dark, I said to go there anyway and went back to the waterfall I saw yesterday and that area, however it was much bigger than I previously thought, I explored and photographed the waterfall filled valley, before heading down into a series of big rocks along the rivers edge with the river through the middle. When I was there I saw a cave, and managed to work my around to it and found a cave with buddhist statues in, but all covered in ice! There was a spring down one wall and it had covered the whole cave interior with ice. As I walked in one huge icicle fell down throwing ice all across the cave floor and prompting the guard to stick his head down and ask if I was O.K.
Took some more beautiful pictures and then made my way back to the waiting car, and then back to the hotel area for some dinner and bed.
