We slept late and as we were eating a good breakfast, the bus driver called and said he was prepared to leave, so we’d have to hurry if we wanted the good seats.

Morning on Lugu Hu (“Lugu Lake”)

The ride back was just as entertaining as the trip in. We stopped at a Chinese medicine/convenience store in the middle of nowhere – much better than the bathroom stop on the trip in where the guy refused my 7 cents in coin form for the privilege to use the smelly toilet, which was just a sluice that ran off down the mountain. (I was about to tell him, “Fine, don’t take it” (I’d already gone), when someone paid the fee in paper money).   Continuing on, I was noting to myself that 90% of the road between LiJiang and Luguhu was curve when there was a loud bang that sounded like a rock smacking the undercarriage of the bus. But, it was actually and exploded tire. So, we puttered to semi-civilization on the edge of a precipice and the driver went to work (later, another bus arrived, apparently friends, and helped to finish the job). In the meantime I wandered off for some pictures and video. The tire was fixed faster than I thought; fortunately I went down the road and was picked up by the bus as the driver continued on. We arrived back in LiJiang in the late afternoon. We dumped our backpacks and then met up with some folks for dinner.

Bad luck with vehicles. I knew we shouldn’t have driven three times around that pagoda.