Remember yesterdays awesome tofu and gravy breakfast? Well, returned to the same shop and they were serving a pea green gravy today with a different kind of bread. I guess it alternates. This stuff was terrible. It tasted like salty mushed mung beans...probably not a bad guess as to what it was. Terrible stuff and the bread didn't help. I didn't finish. Andrea was up and packing by the time I returned. We set off out of town toward the Terracotta warriors.
The city sprawled continuously for 30km. It was another hot cloudless day. It took a little less than an hour to get to the warriors. We got in for half price using our student ID's.
The warriors had lots of visitors besides ourselves. Everyone taking pictures and posing. Everyone pushing, everyone sweating. Trying to look and stare and appreciate this tremendous ancient art is made difficult by the fact that I must share it. It's simply distracting. Right when you get a good view of the armies, someone inevitably tries to wedge themselves beside you to get a picture. It does however help to be tall, overweight and slick with sweat. Less people bother such people.
We eventually bought a souvenir. A man approached us and asked if we wanted to buy a box of warriors. They were of poor quality but would make a good gift. We were interested, so we said 20. He was happy and said sure. Huh. That was surprisingly easy. Usually they put up more of a fight. I guess I should have gone lower. "Twenty dollars". Twenty dollars, at that time, was exactly 100 yuan. We know this, it's common knowledge for us. He says, "so, twenty dollars is about 150 yuan." We laugh at him and say we meant 20 yuan. He looks so sad and says, "I'm sorry. I can't sell it for that." We walk away and tell him were not interested. He pesters us. We keep walking. He keeps pestering. Just before we enter another building and therefore pass security, he says OK to twenty yuan and we get it. Then, as we are walking out of the site, we see similar guys selling identical sets for 15 yuan.
Lunch was at the McDonalds. It was busy and air conditioned. We ate a feast of McDonalds chicken. This meal was the most expensive meal of the trip. A whole 100 yuan for lunch.
Getting on the bike, we rode off. The rest of the afternoon we plugged along through Shaanxi. Every 60 km or so, we stopped and had a little rest. In general, the roads were great. They were quiet. But they were straight and the terrain was flat. Evening arrived and we found a spot to camp out of sight on a little rise near the road. We could see a village into the valley below. The devastating defect of the location was the unusually irritating vegetation. Sichuan pepper trees. These are small shrubs that grow like weeds. They have the height and general appearance of a wild rose bush. HOWEVER, their two inch thorns are coated in some kind of toxin that, after breaking skin, causes a burning rash. If feels like you've got a fire under your skin. You know the numbing pepper, imagine the numbing got inside your skin. I was wearing good pants, so wasn't too badly off. But Andrea took a real grinding.
At twilight, a band struck up in town. They had a fantastic sound to them. It was fun and dancy and I really wanted to join them, but sleep took me too quickly. The town was small and looked quaintly tucked into a small valley. The chicker bugs were chickering loudly and the crickets made a ton of noise. And it was still so hot. Even with the sun down, nothing seemed to chill. Everything was just as hot as it had been all day. The tent was a sauna.
Sleep eventually came, but the musicians played ALL NIGHT.