Familiar faces greeted us on the bus with some people we had talked to
heading back also.
During the steep climb up out of the valley it started snowing, parts
of the road had quite deep or compacted snow already and the forecast
was for it to continue for 3 days so we timed our trip well getting in
and out.
Passing through the earthquake area again was an exciting bit of the
bus trip with the new highway and various work in retaining walls and
clearing the river plenty of trucks are on the road, it's narrow &
windy and overtaking is done on blind corners & if things look close
ie. the on coming car is slowing but not slowing fast enough then the
overtaker toots and the overtaken car is too slow and let him back in.
There were many close calls & plenty of suicidal drivers.
Factual moment(Credit Wikipedia) the quake killed 90 thousand many of
those were children at school who died in the 7000 school buildings
that collapsed. Those who spoke out over the shoddy construction "Tofu
Buildings" were either paid off or arrested & jailed on destroying
social order charges. The parents who lost their one child were
offered procedures & fertility treatment to 'replace' the lost child.
The other exciting moments of the bus trip was the dust in the tunnels
which made for zero visibility keeping Rachel on the edge of her seat.
It's quite normal for a bus to refuel at any time even if it was a
short trip don't expect it to be full and ready beforehand. I saw the
diesel price today was 7.41yuan per litre €0.90 pretty cheap!