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Published: November 24th 2005
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This is the first time on the trip we've actually scratched a destination from our itinerary. We're traveling in the southern part of China now which becomes very mountainous the more you go west and much of the attraction lies in the natural landscape. The one drawback to traversing the country like this is that you travel within geographic pockets and in one region, much of the terrain appears the same throughout. It would be like taking one big scenic trip through the vastlands of North Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming, all in succession. If it was your first stop, you'd be enthralled with North Dakota, next you'd appreciate Montana, but in the end you would hate Wyoming, b/c though it may be just as beautiful, it doesn't differ much from what you had seen before.
So from Guangzhou, the move was to Guilin, Yangshuo and Lonsheng in Guangxi province, then Kunming, Dali and Lijiang in Yunnan province and finally Chengdu in Sichuan province-- each place progressively increasing in land elevation. In Guangxi we visited Guilin and Yangshuo first, which were magnificent. Surrounding both towns are these "karst formations" or limestone peaks that take on some gnarly shapes, and tower over
each town giving the skyline a different frame each time you move from one spot to the next. We spent 3 days in each place and covered a lot of ground by hiking, biking and bussing all around. But by the end of the week we were pretty much spent on taking in natural beauty so decided to cut out Longsheng.
Longsheng does offer a different type of scenery-- the main attraction is Longji Titian ("Dragon Back Rice Terraces") which are hills that farmers have platformed off to lay out their rice fields which, all together, makes a hypnotic visual of row upon row of rice paddies. In season, they're supposed to glimmer with silver and green colors along the side of this mountain giving them the appearance of a Dragon's Back. Our excuse to not go there was that it was off-season, but honestly we just needed to take a break.
We had already scrambled up a good number of hills/mountains up to this point. In Hangzhou we took a nice 30 min evening stroll up GuShan Hill. In Fuzhou we obliged ourselves to walk up 900m Drum Hill. In Quanzhou we paid 2 guys on motorbikes
to drive us to the summit of Qinqyuashan Mountain. In Guangzhou, we took a break and wouldn't even look in the direction of Baiyuan Mountain. In Guilin, we took on an easy Guangming Hill to reach Reed Flute Cave. And in Yangshuo climbed a half hour to the top of Moon Hill. After 2 weeks of non-stop upwards motion, we had fully exhausted ourselves. So when we heard we'd have to climb up an hour to enjoy the terraced rice paddies in Longsheng, we bucked the trend and headed to the next town.
Dali was then our next stop and it was quite nice. It's very similar to Yangshuo in that it thrives on the backpacker population- here they've designated TWO "foreigner" streets with the same English menus reading pancakes and french fries and the same indefatigable reverb of Dance Mix 2003. But just like in Yangshuo, it's the surrounding landscape that is the real draw. Dali is surrounded by the 25 mile long Erhai Lake to the east and the 1940m high Cangshan mountains to the west. But as we explained our current aversion to land elevation, our plan was to thoroughly explore Erhai Lake only.
Being
as how we've suffocated the joy of pedaling around China and that we were told it takes roughly 4 hours to circumnavigate the lake by car, we were hoping to do better than our normal bicycle tour. So here I found I was wrong about foreigners not being able to rent gas-powered vehicles in China. In Dali, the bar Cafe de Jack will rent out motorbikes to anyone with 160 yuan in their pocket and a set of steel balls to think they can take on Chinese traffic. The only thing is I've only learned to ride a motorcycle once, and that was on the backroads of rural Thailand when I was fifteen, having been taught by a 14 yr old, so I was never really given proper instruction.
At Cafe Jack, you simply had to answer 4 questions on paper in regards to your personal riding history. Having answered, "highly experienced" on all 4 counts, the keys were then handed over to me. However, I didn't think it wise to just break out in the open road and try to recall a one-off training session from 13 yrs ago, especially with Carolee in back. So I asked the
Market Selection
Oh How I miss you Cinnamon Toast Crunch guy for a refresher course. He may have seen through my masquerade as he suggested I take a test drive with him around town. I had it pretty much under control, but only when I tried to turn around and killed the engine, stalling in the middle of the street and not being able to get it back in neutral, consequently blocking oncoming traffic from both sides for 5 minutes, did he realize I had no grounds to be taking his $6000 bike. After walking it back to the bar, he politely urged me to hand the keys back over. Yes I am, at times, a blushing Mary.
So, we were back to the Barney Rubble way of doing things using footpower to get around. We did take in a nice ride though, going 65 km all the way to the north of the lake and back to Sha Ping to catch the last half hour of the tribal market which was filled with fascinating wares and more impressively, fascinating people. And the bicycles did allow us to turn off of the more narrow alleyways to catch villagers randomly leading their livestock down the street and lazily fishing off
the lake's shores. Though I still think it may have been a bit more exciting to take a motorcycle out for the day, we left Dali, with its mesmerizing scenery and laid-back air, with a great impression.
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