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Horse trekkin' and Beautiful Jiuzhaigou Park
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In the town of Songpan, adventurers can rent horses and hire guides to go horse trekking in the hills. Brown barron hills soon gave way to snow covered mountians as our horses carried our sorry asses out of the city. When I say sorry asses, that includes sore(ry) butts, backs and legs. Nobody told me that riding a horse was so hard on your butt, but the last time I rode an animal it was a camel, and that was worse (they're wider).
Butt seriously, we had a great time for those for 4 days. We had about 10 foriegners in total, and almost as many guides. The scenery was spectacular and the service good. Meals were cooked for us, tents set up, and the guys took us around for some nice views. In our downtime, we played cards. In particular one game was quite popular, the one with the president, vice president, vice loser and a loser. The addictive nature of the game soon became evident as practically the whole camp was playing, vying for president.
Singing was also a popular pastime; such favourites as our version of "Old MacDonald" sung with "ni how ni how ma" instead of "ei ei ei ei oh" were popular with the guides as well as the tourists ('Ni how ma' means how are you in Chinese). Other songs including "Movin On Up" from the 70's TV show "The Jefferson's" and "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" were also popular owing to the heirarchical nature of the card game. The singing got so out of control that at times I thought I had unknowingly signed up for a barbershop quartet. On the bus leaving the park the ticket collector even invited us up to the mike...poor people, didn't know what they were getting themselves into. Soon the bad elvis impersonations were running rampant and we knew we had to stop or risk getting thrown off the bus.
Our next stop was Jiuzhaigou National Park in the north of Sichuan province. The park is famous for its beautiful light blue coloured lakes which run in succession down two sweeping valleys and is rumored to have giant pandas. The water has many trees and bushes growing from in the broad shallow areas. Often times, there is an unusually long and beautiful waterfall below. Boardwalks are in place so that visitors can view these spectacular sites. All I can say is that I've never seen anything like it. Apparently the water has a high calcium content, and that is what makes the trees grow out of it. Six of us stayed in a tibetan village in the park for 3 days, and even though there were many Chinese tour groups, it was really nice. For some reason, only foreigners were allowed to stay over-night in the park, so that at 5:30 pm, when the tour groups left, it was really quite peaceful. Since there were only about 10 foreigners in the park, we had it all to ourself.
Soon it was time to head back to Chengdu and our group parted ways ending our rowdy card playing days and lovely harmoneous singing. Marcus and I were off for the next leg of our journey...to see the famous 2000 year old Qing Dynasty terricotta warriors of Xi'an. More thumbnails ...
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| 18. | Horse trekkin' and Beautiful Jiuzhaigou Park - Sichuan, China May 26, 2004 (  21 ) |
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