Down the Li Jiang River

After a night of sleep on the first real mattress we got up and went to met the bus that would take us down the river. The mountains we couldn't really see last night were amazing during the day. The city of Guilin was right in the center of the mountains. It was kind of strange to see it like that. We rode in a van for around an hour and then we got to the place where we got on the river. Li Jiang is not a very large river and as there hasn't been as much rain it was low. Luckily we were able to use a bathroom before we went down the river.

On the river we were on a boat that was made out of PVC pipes. It was run by a motor that looked like a weed eater with a propeller on the bottom instead of a blade. It sounded like a weed eater too. By the time we got to a place where we stopped I was really glad not to be hearing the motor. However, I understand why they had it on there it would have take us much to long to float down the river.

The trip down the river took about 3 hours. I thought we might see cormorant fishers but we didn't see any fishing. I did see the cormorants on the shore. I kind of wanted to see them fish but I guess it was okay not too. We saw some water buffalo down by the water drinking. They would stick their entire head in the water to drink it looked funny. About half way down the river we had to stop and wait for a bunch of big tourist boats to go by. I'm not sure why it was so popular as it was really cloudy and looked like it was going to rain. It didn't rain while we were on the river though, if it had it wouldn't have been as nice.

When we got to the end of the trip we got on a little gulf cart thing and drove to a bigger bus. On the way there we passed the picture which is on the 20 yuan. All of the Chinese had been looking for the mountains while we were going down the river. It was funny as they all started pointing when we saw it. They were really excited to see it. The bus took us to a town which was right on the Li Jiang river, called Yang Shou. It was a real tourist town. We went to lunch and it was the first place where we saw dog on the menu I guess it was going to happen at some point on our trip. While we were eating the next door cat was climbing out of the window and trying to get down. It was really entertaining to watch. I had a good tofu dish. However, my stomach wasn't very happy, and hadn't been since the morning.

In Yang Shou we looked at the all  of the stuff for sale. Matthew was over whelmed by all of the people trying to sell him stuff. We did get some gifts and a nice painting of us. I got a dress/skirt which will be nice if it is ever warm again.

We took the bus back into Guilin and had dinner and waited for Emmanual to get done at work.