Longqing Gorge

Early morning start again today, with hopes of making it to Longqing Gorge, about 90kms out of the city. Finding reliable info on it was challenging as each website had a different way to get there and the hotel staff said it would take a few days to get there...I knew that wasn't true unless we were walking! So we headed off to the subway and then to the big bus terminus at Dongsheng where we caught the bus to the Ming Tombs last week, found our 919 bus and were on our way. The net had said the 919 bus terminates at the bus station in Yangqing, and to grab the 875 bus to Wangcheng, a small village nearby and then a shuttlebus to the Longqing site. Another website said to take the 920 direct to Longqing Gorge. Problem was when we got to the end of the line on the 919, there was no bus station, and several different 920 buses, and no 875...so now what? I managed to find a gentelman who spoke enough English and could read the script I had screenshot from the net to tell me we could catch the 15 bus right to Longqing site. I confirmed that with the bus traffic ladies (they flag buses in and out, and get people loaded) and so we waited for the 15 to arrive, and off we went again, with no real idea where the bus might take us. It got pretty rural and then the mountains were looming in the distance, so it began to look like the right bus. I met another gentleman on that bus who spoke little English but had a translator on his phone, so told us it was another 10kms. When we got to 1 kms out, he had to get off the bus, but told the bus attendant that we wanted to get off at Longqing, which she happily did. Once off the bus, we looked around, and saw no sign of any site, and just a sign with 875 bus on it, and a small minibus parked next to the sign. They ushered us over, and I confirmed that they would take us to Longqing Gorge for 5Yuan (about 90 cents), so we piled in with the other passengers (all Chinese) and set out...then he turned down some dirt road through the bush, and we began to worry - where in the hell are we being taken? Surely somewhere to rape, rob and kill us. Then the bus stopped and he told us all to get out, that the site was just down the road through the trees. Really? We were still very unsure as no one spoke any English, but we decided to push on down through the trees and onto the main road again, and lo and behold - we had made it to the site. Crazy. 

Once there, we bought our tickets and began the journey through the site. The first bit was to find the dragon escalator in the photos, which we did - it stood out like a sore thumb next to the dam. Up a series of escalators contained within the dragon and then we were herded into a boat. From there we took the boat ride through the gorge, surrounded by beautiful scenery - sheer cliffs all around, green with foilage. I'm sure I snapped a hundred photos. We passed by the sites for bungee jumping and ziplining but couldn't work out how to get to them as the boat didn't stop there and there were no roads, so ended up passing on it. My daughter had been determined to do the zipline, but I was still fence sitting when we arrived. From the boat we were left at another dock where the Flower Caves were. Talk about bizarre...a series of joined caves filled with artificial landscape - flowers, grasses, bushes, trees, etc, with the most random and sometimes ridiculous things...tigers, leopards, peacocks, cabins, waterfalls, gardens - all fake. Very weird indeed!