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This lady was tiny next to Mack That night we took a late night flight to Guilin after eating a group dinner. The hotel in Guilin was very nice, the nicest and most expensive hotel we would stay in the whole trip according to Zoey. The next morning we got up and had a couple hours to walk around Guilin. I met a man on the street that is a calligraphy professor at Guilin University. He offered to bring us to try some of his sister’s tea at her new tea shop. The tea was made from the cinnamon trees in Guilin, Guilin in Chinese means cinnamon forest. The tea was amazing, but it was a little spendy for me so I didn’t buy any. Mack however, bought some and seemed pretty excited about it. He also showed us some of his calligraphy work, which was pretty impressive.
After eating some quick lunch we got on the bus to go to Longsheng. The ride was amazing. The mountain formations were unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It was also misty so it kind of made the whole seen even more surreal. When we were almost there the mist got pretty thick and we couldn’t see much of anything,
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First view which was a little scary, but we lived. That was probably one of the best bus rides I’ve been on. When we were almost there we had to switch buses and take a smaller bus to go up the rest of the way. That bus ride was a little scary, because like most mountain shuttles, the drivers do it every day and therefore go extremely fast around deadly curves. Luckily we made it up alive. When we got to the top there were a bunch of older ladies dressed in the traditional local clothing that wanted to use their crazy basket backpacks to carry our heavy stuff up the mountain. They were extremely persistent but only a couple people used their services. It was an hour walk but most people had backpacking bags, also I felt bad giving my heavy bag to a little lady when I could carry it fine. She told me she needed the money, which I’m sure she did, but I would have rather just given her money then make her carry my bag and she didn’t want that, so she followed me most the way to our hotel. She was very nice; she was 30
years old and had a two-year-old daughter. I would distract her from her trying to get me to give her my bag and get her to talk about something else and then she would all of a sudden realize she wanted to carry my bag and try to convince me to let her carry it again, it was really cute. She was probably the most persistent person I have met in China. If I see her tomorrow on the way down the mountain I’ll probably let her carry my bag.
The views of the terraces on the way up to the hotel were insane. I have been waiting over a year to see this area. When I found the program I am in now, part of the reason I chose it was to go on this trip and see this place, and it didn’t let me down. The next day we got up, had breakfast at the hotel, which is actually more like a guest house, and then we went out to walk around. We walked around on a path through the terraces towards a village we saw on the map. After about and hour and a half, the
program director called Zoey and said we would never make it to the village and back by the time for dinner, and the village was smaller than the one near our hotel so it might not even have much to eat there. We decided then to head back toward the hotel to find some lunch. The only options for eating were the few hotels in the area. We stopped at one and had a very tasty lunch. After lunch Zoey and a couple others went back towards the hotel. Chris, Tara and I decided to hike up to the top of the mountains to overlook the terrace fields from the top. The hike was pretty steep, and we kept a pretty brisk pace without stopping much. We didn’t really have a reason to go quickly, but it was a good workout and the view was definitely worth it to get there as soon as possible. Pictures of vast views like that seem so boring, but when you are there it is breathtaking. I guess that’s a good reason to see such amazing places in person.
The next day we ate breakfast at the hotel and hiked down to the
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Old man enjoying the view bottom to meet up with the buses. The lady who walked up with me the first day never showed up to carry my stuff, so I was a little disappointed. The smaller buses were scary again, maybe even scarier than riding up, but I put my music on and slept so I didn’t have to watch us fly around curves on cliffs. It was so crazy one girl even threw up when we finally got to the bottom. Everyone was happy to get to the bottom and get back on our big buses and on our way, but to be honest those drivers are also pretty crazy. On the way back to Guilin my bus blew a tire, luckily it was only 10 minutes away from a tire repair shop. They fixed it up in about 15 minutes and we were back on the road. In Guilin we had a lecture by an art professor at the University there. It was pretty cool, she painted a landscape picture and a picture of flowers right in front of us. They also had a gallery with some very impressive paintings. After that it was off to Yangshuo.
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Eric
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I enjoyed your China post. It looks like you are having a good time there. My blog is looking for travel photos. If you have time, email us some at dirtyhippiesblog@gmail.com and check us out at dirty-hippies.blogspot.com Continued fun on your travels, Eric