Finally we boarded the bus at the Caiyuanba bus station in Chongqing and we were off. We will be leaving the municipality of Chongqing and moving on to the nearby province of Sichuan 四川. Our next stop will be the city of Leshan where the UNESCO World Heritage Site listed Giant Buddha is located. We should be getting there in around three hours.
We were traveling on well paved highways from Chongqing municipality and it wasn’t really obvious to us when we crossed into Sichuan. There were a couple of cities from the guides books that sounded familiar. One of the was the city of Zigong 自贡 where there is a Dinosaur Museum. It seems that quite a number of dinosaur fossils have been discovered in this area and the city government has turned it into a museum. It thought that was kind of interesting.
By now, I am already getting sick of riding the bus. It is now more than two hours and there is still no sign of Leshan. We pulled into one bus terminal in some remote town in Sichuan. We noticed that our bus is caked in mud, no wonder we can’t see anything out of the window anymore. Apparently this stop was a lunch stop, but I do not see any restaurants anywhere. There was only this small stall selling food much like the was it was done at the Caiyuanba bus station in Chongqing.
What ensued was several busloads of people ordering food and devouring it just as quickly. It is basically some home cooked Sichuan food. You choose what you want to eat from the pots in front and the staff basically slaps everything together in a tiny plastic tray. While I was still trying to figure out what was going on the rest of the bus was busy eating their food. Well, when in Rome, right?
Actually, the food wasn’t that bad it was just the presentation was terrible. We likewise devoured our food quickly since the bus could be leaving any minute. It was a wet day since it kept drizzling, which would explain the mud on the bus. Soon after our bus mates started going up the bus and with the driver counting the number of passengers we were off.
This wasn’t really a very comfortable ride, since the men in the bus were smoking yet again. The highway also turned into a road of mud. Apparently, the highway to Leshan is under construction and with the rains it has turned in to a road of mud. As a result, our driver could not go very fast. We would sometimes need to move from one side of the road to another since the road ahead of use wasn’t even done yet. This would go on for more than an hour. By the time we finally got through that road, it was already two in the afternoon.
Finally, we were seeing directions to the city of Leshan. It means we were near our destination. The highway finally looks like a highway. And the sun is finally showing itself. Hopefull when we finally get there it would be sunny.
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