We've been on a winning streak since hitting China, but after a splendid few days in Jiuzhaigou, our luck finally broke when we hit Huang Long national park.
Huang Long lies 100km away from the much larger Jiuzhaigou, and came highly recommended by the guidebook for its unique mineral pools and waterfalls. In reality, the park itself was nothing much to write about and was a mission to get to, being 3500m up on the other side of a 4500m mountain range. On the drive to Huanglong, the taxi driver filled us with tales of doom, leaving us with a feeling of dread as we arrived at our destination. There was some truth in his words, the high altitude, compounded by the onset of bad weather made for an uncomfortable night's sleep in a cold and dirty hotel at the top.
Worse was to come on the following day's flights to Chengdu and then Lijiang. We were woken at 6.30 by our taxi driver. Unknown to us, it had started to snow overnight and he urged us to pack and go within 10 minutes before the mountain pass became inaccessible. The journey was slow and treacherous, and the taxi skidded more than once of the icy mountain roads. Fortunately we'd allowed lots of time for our 10 o'clock flight, so despite the cautious crawl to the airport, we were there with time to spare and tipped our driver generously.
We were thanking our good fortune in escaping a snow-in but little did we know that this was just the first hurdle in a day of problems! At check in, we discovered that the airline had messed up our tickets. No one at the airport was willing or able to help and we had no choice but to miss our flight to Chengdu. We resigned ourselves to booking ourselves on the next flight, only to find that the counter did not take foreign cards and neither did the ATM at the airport. We were contemplating a 4 hour round trip to the bank at Jiuzhaigou to pick up some cash, but were able to pursuade the police in to letting us book online from their office.
To cut a long story short, the rest of the day consisted of waiting around in airport terminals as more flights were delayed due to the bad weather. And when we finally reached Chengdu, we had to also re-purchase tickets for the flight to Lijiang...so £450 on new flights through no fault of our own!
It was dark by the time we finally got to Lijiang, 6 hours later than planned, but the warm air and clear star filled skies on the drive in to town, plus the prospect of hooking up with our good friend Sheenie for the 3rd time, hints that we might be on to something better now....
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