Still Point

We’re leaving on our 10-hour journey south to E Jia to celebrate the Chinese New Year with some family.

Because my video camera died, I’m using our Sony video camera as a backup. It is about five years old, is incredibly small, makes a lot of “ding” noises when a button is pressed, and uses MicroMV cassettes (pictured). MPEG-2 technology, so. That’s the best I can do, until I get back to the US and get my hands on an HD 3CCD camera of some sort. I also loaded up my GPS with new batteries and will pinpoint our locations on Google Earth.

I’m excited about this, because as I have previously mentioned, this place we’re traveling to has never been visited by foreigners or tourists before (except for me, as stated by the locals, last time I visited, apparently I was “the first”). It takes 10 hours to drive to this little mountain village, and it’s only about 80 KM south of Chuxiong, Yunnan. The reason it takes so long is because of the roads, and especially the side of the mountain road, which is only the width of a car at times.

I’ll be back with videos and pictures on the 21st. (My cell *should* work, fyi.)