20. Flying Into Yellow Dragon - Huanglong

After that event-filled day in Chengdu, we were scheduled to fly into JiuZhaigou first thing the next morning. We all woke up at 5am for the bus ride to the Chengdu Shuangliu Airport which is 16km out of town. But once we checked in, we found that our flight has been indefinitely delayed due to the snowy conditions in the JiuZhai-Huanglong Airport.

So we waited in the hot airport. Since I am dying for a cup of java, I tried the airport cafeteria. Incredibly, the only coffee I can order form the greasy dog-eared menu is a RMB $45 (US$6) coffee served in a paper cup! The girl there assured me though that it is indeed freshly-ground coffee they specifically prepared for me. Wow!

But the Sichuan Airline was quite nice. First they provided free breakfast, then later, they shipped everyone to the airport hotel and gave us individual rooms. We were also provided with a free lunch at the airport hotel. Our tour guide made a high-level decision and decided that we should be provided with better food in another 5-star hotel. So we went there but we had to rush back when the airline resumed the flight in the early afternoon.

Now, we are flying into an airport that is about 3500 meters (~11,000 feet)in elevation, comparable to Pike's Peak's 14,000 feet elevation. The view from the air was spectacular, see the photo I took close to our landing.



You have to understand that this so-called airport is really just one single straight pavement laid down in the mountains. The plane landed just like a fighter jet landing onto a carrier. It had to brake immediately and then had to do a 180 degree turn-around at the end of the runway so as to be able to taxi back to the terminal.

All of us were worried; not about the plane but about our ability to survive in such high elevation! Well, first I felt the chill immediately, then I felt a little dizziness because of the low level of oxygen in the air. But this dizziness passed quite quickly once we got into the tour bus. The air, though thin, is squeakly clean and the sky is a luscious blue. How nice.

The airport is known as the JiuZhai-Huanglong because it is situated equally far from both Jiuzhaigou (九寨沟 = Nine villages Gully) and Huanglong (黄龙 = Yellow Dragon). Both are UNESCO world heritage scenic areas in the north-west corner of Sichuan Province.



The bus wound through beautiful mountain roads and we saw, in a distance, spectacular snow-packed peaks basking in the late afternoon sun. Huanglong is famous for its calcite deposits that flowed down in colorful pools:



There is also a colorful waterfall. But really, Huanglong is just the appetizer of what comes next. The bus had to wound through the mountain roads to get to our next destination - JiuZhaigou. It went down roads that are named as 1 to 19 hair-pin turns before we got to sleep in our hotel late at night.