Stop! Panda time!

05.08.2010 - 05.08.2010
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Heavy thunder woke us up ten minutes before our alarm. “Great!”
By 8:00am the rain had slowed and Sarah, me, Peter and Leana were in a taxi 20Km north of Chengdu, it turned out that the Panda Breeding Base was only 10Km north of Chengdu and the taxi driver didn’t have a clue where it was, but we arrived eventually after a number of stops to ask directions to the biggest tourist attraction in central China.

It was amazing to see the pandas in an almost natural habitat and we spent the next two hours taking photos of the cuddly creatures. It was interesting to see the work they’d done at the base. The information video said there are less than 2000 Giant Pandas left on the planet and this breeding centre had produced over a third of them, although the video did go into a little too much detail on the artificial insemination process. You don’t really want to see a graphic video of ‘electro-stimulation and manual massage’ of a male panda just after breakfast.

After a slight bus mix-up we eventually found our way back to Chengdu and went for lunch at a great little local restaurant. The local food went down surprisingly well.