Rilong at last

Hey everyone, so we finally made it up to rilong the other day, however I am writing this from Xiou Jin where there is internet and phones to call internationally. The bus ride from Chengdu was soooo long, it took about 17 hours in total - thats longer than our flight across the pacific. We had stopped once for about an hour because of an accident ahead, then several more times for who knows why. I sat next to a tibetan monk who even though he spoke no english was very nice and wanted to share some of his food with me, I shared my ipod with him for a bit too. The bus took us to Xiou Jin where Maki (owner of our hostel in Chengu) arranged for us to be picked up by a taxi to take us to Rilong. We asked her how the driver would pick us out when we arrived - she said it would be easy - we're the only white people in the whole city.
Rilong is up at about 10,000 ft. so yesterday we went for a hike to help acclimatize. We ended up walking up the valley outside of town to the foot of Siguniang - it was beautiful but we couldn't see the summit because it was shrouded in clouds. We did end up hiking about 10 miles or so though, and we all felt very strong given we were in chengdu the day before. Along the trail there were many places to stop and eat in little tibetan style shacks, and we got some very delicious and very cheap food. Tomorrow we will be going up that same valley and climbing the smallest of the four maidens - daguniang shan, which is 5,025m or about 16,000 ft. We will spend 2 days doing that to help acclimatize, then take 2 days off, and then its on to Siguniang!!! Right now we are looking at spending about 15 days up on Siguniang. However, there is a Korean team climbing it right now who are setting fixed lines up it, and we are hoping to catch them while they are still up there - or maybe have them leave the lines for us to use. If we are that lucky than the climb will go much faster and much more safely. So we're keeping our fingers crossed.
We'll be back here after our climb up daguniang shan and before siguniang shan so I might be able to post again then, but no promises. After that it will be a couple weeks before I'm back in any kind of city, so I will have much to tell.

Chengdu, China