Travel Journal

The morning dawned cloudy and misty, much like the day before. Tim had been sick during the night, so neither of us slept very well and we didn't get out of bed until 10:00 that morning. It felt good to take things a little slow and relax for a little while - this is vacation after all!

After breakfast in the Drifter cafe - great Indonesian coffee - we contemplated the best way to get around and see the karst formations. We finally decided on the mode of transportation du jour - electric bicycles (scooters)! Wow, were they fun!! At first Tim and I were a little wobbly on them, but after you got the hang of the accelerator on the handles, they were a lovely way to zoom about the backcountry roads around the Li river.

We headed south for Moon Hill, stopping to take pictures of the hundreds of karst peaks on the way. The limestone cliffs on the karst peaks held hundreds of little caves and crevices. The mist and the clouds lifted a bit enough for us to see way into the horizon - THIS is China at its best! I don't think we could have picked a better place or day to scoot around like the locals, passing water buffalos in rice paddies and orange groves that smelled like heaven!

We reluctantly turned our bikes back toward Yangshuo, knowing that our bike batteries were running low, and we didn't want to run out of steam in the middle of a country road. We made it back to town just fine, but the rental place had to nearly tear the bikes out of our hands - we had so much fun on those things!! Hmmm... do they sell these in the U.S.?

After a quick snack and coffees, we took motorbike taxis to the bus stop with buses headed back to Guilin. Our flight was supposed to leave around 9:30 p.m., but after checking in for our flight, realized, it was delayed by 2 hours. The wait was long and hard - we were so glad we didn't have a connecting flight! Wearing down our iPod batteries, we finally landed in Shenzhen at 12:30 a.m. and took a most terrifying taxi ride to our hotel about a half hour away. We fell into bed so tired, but with huge smiles on our face from the day!