Here is Donna's account of the bike trip. Since she can't access Blogger.com in China, she is sending it to me to post for her -- Yvonne
More pictures for this post are on the post just before this one, and at http://picasaweb.google.com/dlteachape
Our plans for today were to take a nice bike ride and see some of the sites of Yong Shuo then in the evening to go see the light show. We ended up having quite an adventure on our bike ride, to say the least. My biggest worry was being in the crazy traffic, but that ended up being for just a short time!
The ride took us to what I call the inner parts of China, mainly where locals live. The sites
were absolutely breath taking. One of my favorite parts o
f this trip is taking pictures of local people in their everyday lives, and I had the opportunity for lots of that on this trip.
The trip started out great…great paths to ride on, plenty of people to make us feel safe and even a very local place to eat. Here is the restaurant we ate at. The location of the restaurant (which seems odd to call it that since there were no doors or windows to this place) was beautiful. It was by the river where locals offered bamboo boats for rides and the views of the mountains were spectacular. It was right before lunch when we met a girl from Germany who asked if she could eat lunch with us, since she was also on a bike but by herself.
Here is a picture of the kitchen where they cooked our lunch. Lunch consisted of rice, an eggplant dish, a green bean and chicken dish and a whole chicken. In China, sometimes when you order chicken, that is what you get --the entire chicken cut up and served with peppers (I come to find out). So on our table is placed this huge plate of chicken including bones, feet, head and all. Sam tried a chicken foot -- I on the other hand, stuck with pieces I recognized.
After lunch our new friend, Teresa, decided to go with us to see “Dragon Bridge”. We really didn’t know how to get there but we had this nice local woman also on a bike kind of escorting us. It was another 30-minute bike ride through areas we could never find our way out of alone. The twists and turns she took us on were beautiful, but also made me nervous. Sam and Teresa were very happy…you could see it in their faces. The homes we saw were just small shacks -- many with no doors or windows. One older local came out of her home smiling and waving for us to come into her place. We didn’t go in, but it I know if we had it would have been very interesting.
Anyway, we finally get to “Dragon Bridge” and she was right it was beautiful. This bridge is more than 500 years old and the largest arch bridge in China. My thoughts when we got here were that we would have to take the bamboo boats because we had no idea how to get out of this place. The boat would take us and our bikes down the river to a stop close to our location. So the woman tells us the boats can only take two people, and she points to me and Sam. I tell her (she did speak and understand a bit of English) “no, all three” she tells me $400 yuan f
or the two boats. Even for our standards that was a lot of money…like about $52 US dollars. Mind you, this was the most expensive lunch we had to date, and it was $13 for the three of us. So, $52 for a boat ride was way too much. Sam has become very good at haggling for a lower price since he has been to China, so he tried to work her down. She only came down a little and he could tell she was not going to go low enough for us to take the deal. (We only had $200 yuan on us). So Teresa and Sam decide we can find our way back by going over the bridge and just heading back.
Lets just say that 2 hours later (seemed like 10) we made it back. We had to say to every local we came into contact with, “Yang Shuo” and point. No one understood English, they just shook their heads. Luckily, we eventually did come into contact with some people who did help us more than just shake their head. We basically stayed to the main road (which was just a dirt road, but it was wider than the paths we were on most of the time). After about our 5th “Y” in the road, having to make decisions each time…and no they were not educated decisions, we had to go on instinct -- we came upon two men working in the rice fields. Again we asked “Yang Shuo?” and they pointed to a path between these two mountains. By this tine I am getting a bit nervous, we have no idea where we really are, it’s hot and humid,we have only a little water left and we're still unsure where to go. We decide to follow the direction ( I mean the point) of the men. Up and over this mountain we go. I never thought my first experience with mountain biking would be in China. We have been riding for about 5 hours at this point through rough paths with rocks and stones and mud…
Then we come upon a little man who when we asked “Yong Shuo?” started running along this path...so we followed him. By this time my knees have about had it and my hands hurt so bad because I had to hold on so tight to the bike. Anyway, he takes us to a river that has bamboo boats. Oh no! not again. But he tells us $20 yuan to take us across the river. We are like, "Yes!" since we knew at some point we would have to cross the river again. He tied two boats together loaded us and our bikes on and off we go. He sang us a song and really brought smiles to our faces. I think right before this point even Sam and Teresa were a bit nervous. We got off the boats and see Chinese writings on a rock that were the symbols for Yuan Shuo. We gave him $20 yuan, which is enough to feed his family for about a week. 30 minutes later we were in territory we recognized.
Here is a video of the man singing as he takes us across the river: http://picasaweb.google.com/dlteachape/BikeTrip#5342025084876599410
Although at some points I was not sure we would find our way home, I look back and I am glad we made the trip and can write about it.
