10TH - 12TH JULY

It was with great relief that we were leaving Kunming, nobody had enjoyed their stay there and nobody was in a hurry to return, except that’s where the tour ends but thankfully we don’t stay there. We had an approximate 6 hour public bus ride to Dali, hurray the bus was a coach and was quite plush, so not the bone-shaker we were expecting, it also had a CD player so we watched the film, The Red Lantern. Well I watched the film but Rob was asked if he could try and help fix Greg’s laptop which was refusing to work, Rob’s diagnosed the problem to me the night before, yeah even before he had looked at the thing he knew what was wrong with it, the hard-drive was knackered and there was nothing he could do with it.

We arrived in new Dali where we were asked to leave the coach even though Greg had agreed with the driver that he would take us to the Old town City

walls, after much Chinese chat, the driver re-agreed to take us further but not as far as we wished to go, so we got dropped off in the pouring rain on the side of a road somewhere not too far away from where we were going! We didn’t have to wait long before the hotel people came in their little Rascal vans to take us to our destination. The place we are staying was really cool, its another charity based place with an art school, again to help disadvantaged kids and encourage all forms of art and craft. The place is really lovely it’s very secluded with lots of greenery and rustic rooms, it even has a swimming pool, not like we need it as its rainy season here! Yeap its chucking it down and has done for the past 2 days, we are off to Tiger Leaping Gorge tomorrow for the start of our trek and to be honest if the weather is anything like it is here then we’ll be able to see nothing! All the mountains that apparently surround this village are cloud covered, its fairly chilly but not spoiling our fun, to be