YUNNAN PROVINCE 云南省 5

 

We packed the bags and checked out because the hotel was fully booked that night. It was only 80 RMB this time to get into the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain Scenic Area.  The cable car was temporarily closed due to high winds.  At about 08:30 we turned off the road and drove up a track through pines and parked below the cable car access road. Then we walked up. Early on Jemi found and photographed Yunnan Nuthatch in some young pine trees.  A shuttle bus came speeding round a bend in the road, a sign that the cable car had restarted.  Near the top Jemi was told off for walking on the road with us two foreigners by an officious man in plain clothes.  (Everywhere we went she was mistaken for a guide on this trip, but she took it well!).   The buses were very fast and dangerous.  The bus drivers did not expect to encounter walkers on the road, so we had to be careful.

 

 

There was good habitat near the lower cable car terminal – moss-covered pines.  Jemi elected to try the cable car to the highest point and get the bus back while Nigel and I walked back down the road.  Birds were few and far between. We found the car and returned to the main road, where we got filthy looks from a couple of men in orange reflective coats.  I think they were fire wardens.  In a country of chain smokers, if you want to preserve your pines with a carpet of needles below, there is no alternative but to keep the public OUT of the woods.

 

We met Jemi in the coach car park and back at Lijiang moved to the Lijiang Hotel (RMB120). Dinner with a view of the old town rounded off the day.

 

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