To Walnut Grove Tiger Leaping Gorge: Across the Jinsa River, upper stretch of the Yangze

March 27, 2007

The wind was strong last night, just after dusk until about 1 am. The inner tent didn't move, the rainfly flapped around. The tent is smaller than the Mountain Hardwear tent we used in Patagonia, the two thermarests just fit in side by side, which is nice that they don't slide away. We are up at first light, break camp, eat cornflakes and push back to the main road....

....Patrick has a flat tire. He quickly changes the inner tube and decides to change to a new tire, leaving the old tire with only 7500km of wear hanging on a tree. Someone will find a use for the material.

We are back on the cobblestone road downhill, but don't get very far.... Patrick has another flat, this time changing the inner tube to a brand new one.

We have beautiful views of tall snow-covered mountain peaks, the sky is clear and we are off again by 8:30am. It is easier to cope with the cobblestones this morning after a night's rest. This has to be the most convoluted road around... it goes on forever!! We finally make the 15km to town around 10:30 am and ask for directions to the ferry. It's not until 1pm that we are on the other side bikes loaded again and cycling to the middle rapids of Tiger Leaping Gorge.

Finding the ferry is an adventure!

We reach the green fields and town on a plateau and could see the edge of the gorge. We look up and can see the area where we camped. We cycle in the direction people point us to reach a junction, go left a ways, ask a person in the field, they point in the opposite direction. Patrick leads us back following the canyon through a village and says, "I'm just going where the main traffic goes." We reach a house that looks like the end of the road. Patrick cycles around the parked car, Rachel following and there are signs marking a trail. The backside of the house is signed Pai Pai Guesthouse, this is the one we heard about in Lijiang. We are happy we stopped and camped rather than trying to find this last evening.

Soon two men are there, Patrick asks about the ferry, one man writes in the dirt 100 yuan, Patrick tries to negotiate a lower fee, but no go. He knows we don't have any other option to get across the river. The older man brings a straw basket to load our gear he will carry, it is heavy!! He leads us off down the trail with us pushing our bikes. We wind our way down to the Yangtze River to the ferry. Another fee of 40 yuan...

The crossing is about 150 feet and takes only a few minutes. Then it's a steep climb out of the canyon done in stages. The men carry their load up then on the steep part come back to help with the bikes. When at the top, they hold the bikes so we can reload, we are on a plain. We cycle only a bit and stop to eat.

Then following the road Patrick sees a minivan drop off hikers. The road is unsealed, big rocks in places. In the distance Patrick sees an asphalt road coming down the hillside...we aim for this road through what sometimes seems like an alley on the edge of the town. There is a hotel where we join the asphalt, we have a coke and confirm the direction we need to go.

We ride about 13 kms following the rim of the canyon and see incredible views of the canyon and the glacier-blue colored river, up and down, mostly asphalt, occasionally rocky. One stretch with a strong headwind and thinking we have 4 kms to go...we reach Chateau de Woody's! We are hungry, so after carrying everything to the room, we go to the restaurant and have beef-vegetable burritos (pita-like); clean up with a hot shower, rest.

Later about 6pm we walk up the road to the other guesthouse, think of eating there but waited too long to be served and return to Woody's restaurant for a pizza and chicken vegetable pie.

We are tired. We traveled all day and up until the LAST 8 kms or so, we could still see the area where we camped.