Yangshuo Biking

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Finally day three and the sun is poking through the mist (pollution?) for us. Pete and I chose to hire more ‘fancy’ bikes from Bike Asia which included helmets, safety drilled into me from childhood! We ended up hiring a guide who was there and told us she could take us around the smaller more difficult to navigate roads. I’m really glad we chose to take a guide, as we definitely wouldn’t have been able to see the rural areas like we did with her, keeping off the busy truck filled roads. We went to moon hill (and to our guides house where we met her parents in law, husband and son), via the Yulong river villages. Part way through James and Macey's tandem bike got a flat tyre-not cool- but between them and the guide they managed to convince the hotel where it was hired from to send another one out on the back of a tiny motorbike/ute type vehicle, so that was just a small hiccup in the end.

Our guide was also an easy contact for getting good priced tickets to go and see the Cormorant birds fishing (show). It was freezing so we were the only boat out to watch them. It’s a pretty clever system- birds have string around their necks which prevent them from eating the decent sized fish. The guy on the fishing boat had about 5 or 6 birds- similar to shags in NZ I thought. They look very sleek paddling along, diving under and surfacing alongside the boats as they head upstream. They didn’t catch a lot of fish the night we watched, but when they did the fisherman had it down to a fine art, scooping in the bird and out plops the fish into his basket. As viewers we were in a separate boat that followed along. Our driver said each bird eats about 1 kg of fish per day, so in the winter they have to supplement as they don’t catch enough. The birds go through special training, which takes many months. Young birds will spend a couple of months just sitting on the boat watching the older birds do their thing, then they will get to swim around but not dive etc building up slowly. They did seem rather loyal and had a lot of character. I did feel sorry for them not being able to eat their catch, but at the end of each session the fisherman takes them back to the shore and removes the string to feed them. It seems like they are well fed and healthy.

Then to sleep- with our friendly taxi driver booked for an early start back to Guilin airport.

-Hannah+Pete

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