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Thursday April 9th, 2009 |
Yangshou,
Rain – Max: 18; Min: 16; Avg: 17 |
We woke to a change in weather. It had thundered and lightened during the night
and the rain had finally arrived - heavy at first, but lighted as the day
progressed. Added to that, Steven woke with pounding head, throbbing finger and
upset stomach. The cut finger was looking OK- (i.e. it would heal by itself as
long as we could keep it straight), a very light breakfast helped the stomach
and a couple of headache pills helped his head.
We spent a quiet morning at the hotel, reading with Daji, Yanmei doing some
school work and Steven taking a back-up of our pictures and video. Steven looked at things we could do in the rain and found
a cave we could visit about 15km outside Yangshou. Lene wasn’t interested, so
after sharing a couple of apples a taxi picked us up to visit the Silver Cave.
The Silver Cave is a multi-storied karst cave including the lower cave, the
grand hall and the upper cave. There are 2 km of paths criss-crossing the caves
with many amazing limestone formations with names such as the Waterfalls on
Snow Hill, the Heavenly Screen of Music, the Deep Moon Palace, Three Treasures
of the Buddha, The Pearl-decorated Umbrella and the Solitary Pillar Propping up
the Sky. A guide leads you through the caves - our presentation was in Chinese.
At least today, the caves were packed - parties of ca. 50 people leaving at 5
minute intervals. The caves are well worth a visit, amazing formations,
illuminated in different colours - the Chinese love lighting things up, and I
must admit generally do a pretty good job of it.
The taxi-drive was also an experience – a budding F1 driver in a small
van without any suspension – and Yangshuo roads are full of holes and bumps.
Back at the hotel, Steven had a temperature and went straight to bed, Yanmei,
Daji and Lene taking dinner at the hotel.
NEXT
DAY (10th)
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