Evolution bites back

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You may remember in my last post that I mentioned we were next headed to Chonqing. Well we still went there but i'm not gonna say a lot about it, mainly because there isn't anything to say. It's just a megalopolis of 32 million people, the world's biggest technically, and has the Yangtze river running through it, the colour of which Willy Wonka would be proud of. That's it really, oh and it's pollution levels mean you rarely see the sun. 

-fact of the day, only 1% of Chinese people live with acceptably good air quality... 

Anyway after 3 exhilarating days there and then 2 more of just travelling and an overnight stop we arrived in Guilin, which is a gorgeous town surrounded by incredible landscapes of karst limestone hills and (trumpet fanfare.... blue skies!!) we got to the hostel had some breakfast and a shower before hiring bikes and setting off to explore the city. It was a glorious day to be out riding around the streets of Guilin ans not getting involved in a collision was half the fun!
We parked up outside our first stop, the Seven Stars Park, China's oldest tourist attraction! An impressive, beautiful park filled with carving-filled caves, tree-covered limestone hills, rivers, waterfalls, colourful butterflies & giant moths the size of bats! We spent ages just wandering around absorbing the feast of nature surrounding us. One of the best places we'd been to for a while!
So on making our way back to the bikes we came across a troupe of 50 or so wild monkeys on the move, so we let them all pass by and slowly followed them. The Chinese people also walking this way seemed more than happy to let us lead... we had to walk through a small cave to reach the entrance gate when 3 monkeys ahead of us suddenly stopped and stared back, before running at us! We panicked and I just shouted 'run!!' but we didn't get very far as there were also monkeys behind us, now aware of the 'threat' developing. I won't repeat what I shouted then as there may be children reading, but you can imagine what being surrounded by angry wild monkeys would make you shout. 
I then just went into survival mode and made myself as big as I could and screamed at the monkeys which made them take a step back but nothing like the retreat I'd hoped for. Rhian had decided to leg it through the cave whilst the monkeys were distracted by my display, which I had decided by now wasn't working. So I switched tactics and just walked backwards, slowly, with my hands in the air, hoping they would see this as 'I'm not a threat'... and it worked! Then once clear we allowed ourselves to breathe again and return our heartbeat to somewhere approaching normal! I was genuinely scared that I was done for, and fully prepared to kick a monkey into the river if they jumped me!

One for the grandkids, that.

We jumped back on the bikes and made our escape to a nearby cafe for something to eat. We left our bikes locked up downstairs for the hour or so that we were upstairs reflecting on our near-death experience. On finishing we found our bikes being manhandled over the railings that they were locked to by a makeshift security guard and his mate and when we shouted at them, they gestured that we were in the way of their car parking space! A)the car was already in the 1st bay and we made sure we weren't in the way of that and b) there wasn't even a car in the second space! Once we'd recovered the bikes we realised that all 4 tyres were deflated! Yes they're not the best bikes in the world but all 4 going flat at the same time? Hmm.. I was already full of adrenalin so it wasn't going to take much to rile me up! They knew we knew what they'd done so after some shouting from us, the guard sheepishly took us to a random street where he found a pump to refill our tyres. Quite an eventful afternoon!!! 

The next day after a somewhat lazy morning owing itself to the day long bike riding, we got on a bus, then another bus and then another bus (this is v difficult when nothing is in English!) and got to a village called Jiaōtoûzhōu, one of the most beautiful and serene places you could imagine. Chickens and dogs roaming around cobbled streets, ducks out for an afternoon paddle in the cleanest stream you'll ever see, rice fields surrounding us for miles tended to by farmers in conical hats and bamboo tools, all set against a backdrop of mountains and blue skies. Heaven would do well to look this good. Conscious of the last bus back we didn't spend as long as we could have here in the fresh air but it's the most beautiful place we've yet seen on this trip.

G&R

xx

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