Day 51 Bus to Yuanyang

Mothers close your eyes/ears another day and another exciting bus trip.
This driver was on a mission a bit of a speed demon plenty of blind
corner overtaking but his party piece was tearing up the narrow rough
mountain road till we came to a fully laden truck with a broken rear
axel & the two mangled wheels propping up a leaning truck leaving a
pretty tight space between it and the edge of the road, a solid
several hundred metre drop. Rachel's quiet plea in English of "oh god
please don't try that" didn't quite make it to the drivers ears as he
crawled past tyres on the edge and wing mirror sliding past the truck.
It was tight he did well to get past but it was pure luck the edge of
the road didn't collapse.
We arrived in Xinjie at 5pm to find another bus or taxi to yuanyang a
further hour away. We were quickly surrounded by locals some offering
a taxi & others just interested, luckily someone came up and showed us
to a bus going our way & cheap 20yuan each.
Our hostel is one of two places to stay in a village of maybe
100houses amongst rice terraces. There are many villages close by of
similar size but this one has a great view!
We had a number of strokes of luck meeting a Chinese American Ming and
his young Chinese friend Youyou who speak English when no one else
here does, they also organised a taxi to share round the rice terraces
tomorrow and it was looking like a diet of instant noodles only for
the last few days in China but they eased our cash problem since we
didn't bring enough(no banks or ATM out here)by exchanging Rachel's
60USD for yuan.