Hi All,
We arrived last night and then got dropped off in the middle of nowhere in Guilin by the shuttle bus. Luckily we had a vague map and got some help from the local people so found the hostel. Not happy.
Got into the room at the hostel and noticed that there was a loud airconditioning noise and walls vibrating. I was already annoyed with the bus and this was to my expectation with the hostel. Must have been spoilt with other chinese hostel standards.
We booked a bamboo boat tour down the li river inbetween the most famous mountains in China. If you have ever seen misty mountain drawings from china then they most probably will be these mountains.
Next day.
The airconditioning noise stopped some time during the night which was a relief.
The minibus arrived to pick us up then went to the next hostel only to find 11 more people with backpacks ready to go as well. So another world record attempt at fitting people in a van and we ended up with a stack of backpacks on our legs. It was only a 40 min trip so it was alright and we arrived at the river. One of the people from the other hostel was an Australian we had met at the Russian Chinese border.
The bamboo rafts which had 4 seats and only 4 people on the seats had turned into PVC pipe rafts and the seats were filled with 2 people per seat. Not exactly as indicated in the advertising. So we headed off with the 100s of other PVC rafts on the river along with the larger boats filled with mainly chinese tourist. Sound ghastly? it was interesting but not as bad as it might seem.
The scenery was magnificent and the shallow jade water. The banks of the river were covered with large bamboo and sometimes there were buffalo in the clearings. The mountains towered above us as we travelled the most spectacular 24km section. We reached our destination and were picked up and driven to Xingping before getting onto a bus to Yangshuo. We then had to arrange another bus trip to Guilin and were surprised to find that we needed to wait for 1.5hrs to get onto the very regular bus. A very busy route indeed at this time of year. We got back to Guilin and decided that we would base ourselves at picturesque Yangshuo about 50km away. Sure it is very touristy but it has close access to amazing natural beauty.
Bye,
David and Vanessa
