As much as Jenny was looking forward to her classmate reunion, I was hoping to get an opportunity to bike in China. Well, on Wednesday, my wish came true. We opted for a real bamboo raft excursion. A very popular way for tourist to get to the dock where the raft start its trip down the river is to bike. So, we rented, near by our hotel a tandem for Victoria and I and another regular bike for Jenny. Our hotel staff arranged to be escorted from our hotel by the person that would be running our bamboo raft. So all of us biked from our hotel through hectic traffic, then through small roads and even through colorful rice fields and finally arrived at the dock. Our bike were promptly loaded on a truck to be brought to the dock location at the end of our raft excursion. Well, once on site, we started to be told that we would probably not be able to all fit on one bamboo raft as originally told. For safety reason, they highly recommended that I take a separate raft. A bit reluctantly we agreed. Jenny negotiate a reasonable price for the 2nd raft and then we sent off. It’s a bit tricky to walk on those bamboo raft!
Within the first minute of our excursion, we learned that we would be going through a few “obstacles” along our way, nine to be exact. Approaching our first “fall”, I quickly understood why our guide told us to remove our shoes and sock and store them away. I was extremely glad we took separate bamboo raft, as just by myself, my raft plunged deep in the water – almost up to my seat. If the three of us had been on the same bamboo raft, I think we would have been the first bamboo submarine to explore the river!
Needless to say the river excursion was very enjoyable and. thankfully for our hard working raft guides, the weather was much “cooler” than yesterday – relatively speaking.
At the end of our excursion, we picked up our bikes and ventured on the road again. One of the hotel staff, we met up with, suggested some nice roads to get back to our hotel. The hour it took to head back to our hotel was clearly a trip highlight up to now for us…well OK at least for me!
The next morning, we had, for the first time, a Continental breakfast. I think we are better to stick with the Chinese breakfast. We left our hotel a bit sadden to leave our friendly hotel staff and took the bus back to Guilin. On the bus ride, I was again reminded how challenging driving in China can be … all this chaotic driving without a single moment of road rage. In Guilin, we quickly found a hotel which Jenny qualified a 4 star. In the afternoon, we visited some large and beautiful (and busy) caves (Reed Flute Cave) and later on we visited another attraction, the Seven Star park, one of China’s finest municipal park were President Clinton had made a speech on the environment. Although, Jenny had previous great souvenirs of Guilin, she agreed that our stay in Yangshuo was even better.