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Published: June 18th 2017
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Geo: 36.0757, 103.679
There really is something special about traveling, especially when you wake up in a different place. The sun was slowly rising and filling the train carriage.
The strange landscape kept racing past. I had my camera ready to catch a glimpse of something special and different.
By the time we had arrived at the Louzhou train station at 9:18am everyone was up. They had breakfast. Most of the kids had the 2 minute instant noodles where you just add the boiling water.
We had another guide waiting for us. On the bus we all went.
First stop, The Waterwheel Garden. OK. The chinese love their gardens. The guide asked us if we wanted to go on a boat made of sheep skin that goes on the Yellow river.
We walked down the stairs past the Huge Waterwheel and then closer to these boats.
We almost died. I thought it would the shape of a boat with sheep skins stretched out as the outside of the boat instead of metal or wood.
NO. These where the whole sheep skin blown up like a balloon. The legs and head where tied up just like a balloon. Really strange, but really clever. They were all a little different.
They were all tied up onto a bamboo frame almost like a ladder. So the balloon skins went into the water with the wooden frame on top that you sat on.
So about 13 blown up skins made up the raft.
“So who wants to go on one?” our guide asked.
“Me!” “Me!” “Me!” “Me!” “Me!” “Me!” all of the kids cried.
So we put lifejackets on them and off they went into the rapid flowing Yellow river on a boat made of 13 blown up sheep skins tied together with a ladder.
As they floated away we all looked at each other and said, “Did we really just do that?”
We watched them disappear downstream to the other side of the river. Before you knew it they had arrived back with a motor boat.
In the olden days these sheep skin boats where the only way to get across the river.
Next stop the Sculpture of the Mother River. Nice, I guess. It sits right on the river and over looks the White Pagoda Mountain Baitashan Yuan Dynasty White Pagoda Temple.
We walked along a very new steel Bridge to get across the river. Then we started walking up to reach the temple. The kids where tired and
decided to stop half way. We the adults continued. You get a really good view of the city on the way down.
Back in the city we had a few hours to spare so we walked around and found an old ares in a temple that was like a flee market. There were so many old things. Pottery, jewelry, food and crickets that sang very loudly enclosed in a manmade little woven cane box. There where so many people selling these crickets. We bought one so that we could let it go.
We then had our last 1 and a half hour drive to the airport.
We left at 20:00 and arrived back at 23:35.
This holiday was experienced by 4 brave (insane, crazy, ex-pat) families that put their faith and trust, in one adventurous Italian man with an even more adventurous travel plan, that I just happen to be married too.
In Luca we trust.
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