Day 43 - Face to toe with the Grand Buddha

Being off buses for a whole 24 hours, we thought it was about time we got back on one - so we jumped on a sissy local bus and headed traight to the bus station for a 2 hour journey on a big long-distance bus to Leshan. Still not quite satisfied, once in Leshan we got on a local bus headed for the wharf where the Dadu River and the Min River meet, and where the Dafo (Grand Buddha) looks over the water. Enjoying the trip so much, we stayed on well past our stop, only getting off when the conductor convinced us we didn't want to go any further out of town!
We could have caught the bus back in the opposite direction but decided to adlib our way back by foot - this turned into an hour and a half wonder along the riverside and provided us with a variety of sights including multi-arched, concrete bridges that spanned over the massive river, and temples dotted around the surrounding hillsides.

Finally at the wharf, intial plans to get up, close and personal with the Buddha were thrown overboard after chatting with a tourist who told us we would be stuck in a line for 3 hours, hardly moving, just to walk past the world's largest Buddha. Instead we found a tour boat that took us directly past the Buddha and paused for the obligatory snap-shots. One of the benefits of going by boat is that we got to see two large (but dwarfed compared to Buddha himself) guardian statues on either side of buddha, that can't be seen from land.
Once at the statue we were blown away by its presence - the statue is carved into the cliff face and is 71m high - to give some perspective, one of his fingernails is bigger than an averge person, and his big toe is 8.5m long! The mammoth task of carving it was started by a lone monk in AD 713, and it wasn't finished until 90 years after his death - and we could see why! Looking up at the Dafo, we realised it was worth the 5 hours of bus-tripping and nearly 2 of walking to get here.

Back in Chengdu, we were surprised to find a hostel BBQ underway, and we now plan to get ourselves some BBQed delights for dinner - yum - and you can't have a BBQ without a beer ...
Adlibing it with the Grand Buddha.