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Day 59
After another night's sleep on public transport we finally arrived in Dali not feeling our freshest but glad to have made it! Some confusion at the bus station over whether we were in Dali City or in Dali Old town as we had booked eventually resulted in us having to catch another bus to get to the old town. In China you put your bus fare into a little box for the driver to check and then he presses a button to drop it into a larger inaccessible box so you have to have the right money as no change is available. We have been caught out a few times with this, sometimes having to pay a litle over the fare to get on but this time all we had was a 50y note to pay a 3y fare - oh dear we thought. Thankfully a kind local fella paid the fare for us.
We have found a lovely place to stay which is a real bargain especially in comparison to what we had to pay in Macau and Shenzhen. The bonus as well is that it has free laundry machines which have helped us to
freshen up our packs a little!
Following our long journey and having moved on every couple of days and packed in the sights in the last few weeks we have decided to spend a few days in Dali just relaxing. With this in mind we spent the rest of the day reading in the courtyard of our hostel and having a brief wander around the local area, a small and pretty walled town.
In the evening we took the 30 second walk into the town for dinner. After a long time of eating local food (apart from our cheeky KFC at the train station) we fancied something easy and western. We picked ourselves a nice little place overlooking the street with an amusing Chinese waiter who was eager to practice his english and ordered a Bacon Burger and Chips. This however turned out to be a bit of a mistake, arrived cold, a bit stale and a bacon burger that didn't include a burger! We still had an intersting chat with the waiter who told us what our names meant in Chinese (Mark's was 'Horse Big' and Chrissie's was 'Scientist West')
Day 60
The sun was
blazing in the morning so we made the most of it after a few days of rain and relaxed in the courtyard area. We have really enjoyed chilling out over the last couple of days and for the first time since we started the trip we're not tied either by budget (we couldn't afford to spend longer in Japan) or by a tight visa deadline. The new China visa gives us another 90 days in China of which we'll probably only use about 2-3 weeks but its great not to feel rushed.
In the afternoon it clouded over a little so we went for a walk to try and visit the site of the three pagodas just out of town. We were really disappointed to arrive and find that the entrance fee was pretty extortionate (around 8 quid each which equates to about 8 nights accomodation each in China). Deciding that this was too much for our budget we snapped a couple of pictures from outside before heading back to town.
The clouds quickly turned to rain so we watched a film in the hostel before going into town for tea at a local Tibetan style restaurant, the
Yagudu Cafe.
Day 61
The plan was to hire ourselves some bikes and cycle around some of the huge lake next to Dali. However, I think the laziness of the past few days had set in fully and we woke late to rain and decided to have another leisurely day - not sure we're ever going to leave here at this rate!
We went for a more extensive stroll around the town and explored what we could of the old town walls.
In the evening we went out for dinner and having enjoyed last nights meal so much we went back to the Yagudu Cafe for another good nosh up. This was to become our 'local' in Dali and we even had our own table which we sat at every time!
Day 62
We actually managed to make it the the cycle hire shop and set out towards Lake Erhai (or Ear-shaped lake). We didn't manage to find a path that followed the bank of the lake but we cycled close to it through farmland, rice paddies and a series of rural villages before heading back to town along the main road.
The
rest of the day was spent relaxing (surprise) before going back to our local for tea and being entertained by the owners' young daughter who seemed intent on making sure her ball went into our dinner!
Day 63
The old town of Dali is set in front of a small range of mountains which we had wanted to go up since arriving. The tops are often clouded over so we were waiting on the weather to make a decision as to whether to go up or not.
Thankfully we woke to a fine and clear morning and we walked up to the point where a chair lift takes you up to around halfway up the peaks. It was at this point that we realised we had forgotten the camera so, being a true gentleman, Mark ran back to town and back up the hill to collect it.
The chair up gave some excellent views and we visited the small temple at the top of the chair before taking the 'Cloudy Tourist Road' along the mountain range. This is around 11km long, and paved all the way. It hugs the mountainside taking you around steep gorges and
past streams and waterfalls whilst offering amazing views of the town below and the huge Erhai Lake. We took a couple of fitness-improving forays off the main track to visit a cave-like place in a very precarious position (which Mark couldn't resist climbing) and some stunning waterfalls and pools.
We weren't sure what to expect at the other end of the path as the guidebook had been a little unclear as to how to get back to civilisation and our map was worse than useless! We arrived at the end of the trail to find there was a cable car down. This was a little out of our price range so we decided to try and find a track down to a road/town where we could catch a bus back to Dali. After a couple of false starts we stumbled upon a dirt track that seemed to lead in the right direction. It was a tough decision over whether to go for it and hope the track didn't peter out as our legs were saying they wouldn't really like the climb back up to find another route. We chose to go for it and began to wend our way
down along the narrow track crossing the stream at various points and clambering over a few boulders on the way.
It's amazing how you can convince yourself that you're going the right way when that's what your legs want to hear. We spotted what could have been tyre tracks and said " Well if a bike can make it down here...". Then we found a clearing where a man was sat with a bundle of sticks and we realised that the tracks had been made by him dragging the sticks and the phrase changed to "Well if the stick man can get down here...". After we lost the stick man we found some pony/horse evidence (I'm too polite to say what it was) and we started on "Well if a pony can make it down here..."
Thankfully the track did lead us in the right direction and past some beautiful scenery so we were glad we had gone for it. A few km later and still some distance from the nearest town we met a man with a pony and carriage. He offered to take us down and as it was close to 6pm and our tummies were
starting to rumble we thought it would be a good idea. After bartering a price and destination we climbed into the cart and began our very bumpy journey down towards the main road - this involved butt cheeks leaving the seat on several occasions - extreme horse and cart riding!
Having had a great day we made it back to the hostel and went for our last meal at the Yagudu Cafe for another delicious meal at our table and said goodbye to the lovely cafe owners.
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marney
non-member comment
world tour scam
no 3 guest house pooch my arse......thats my alfie your stroking. how did you get into my house when i was at work?