China 2012 - #3

Journal 3

Another big tour today. Almost everything was bigger and larger than the previous tour: larger caves, larger amount of  people, larger river to cross! The only thing that was smaller was the waterfall. That’s where we began. It was small but beautiful. Even there, there were stepping stones to cross from the top. This was the first part of the Tianhe Pool Scenic Area.

The second part was the boat trip into the caves and the hike into the belly and ceiling of the mountain. This was phenomenal and beautiful. We got great exercise on this adventure.

The trip to the ancient city of Qingyan was an experience to remember. There we met crowds of ethnic minority Chinese. If you got the impression from the previous journal that we were a phenomenon in Guiyang, that was nothing compared to this place! We reckon that most of them had never seen black folks before. They stared and stared and stared. They kept walking and kept looking back. They were all so friendly (even the would be pickpockets); with the biggest smiles (albeit betel nut chewing affected). The one long very crowded road was jam packed with people and shops. This segment of the tour was more people-interest oriented than anything else. It was a great experience.

We thought the next tour was a botanical garden tour. But the main attraction was crossing a waterfall on stepping stones. Vie does not like crossing Flat Bridge in Jamaica – even in a car! So you can understand the trauma crossing this long waterfall, with the water rushing through the stepping stones! But we lived to tell the story. Found out later that this was part of the beautiful Flower Stream Park (Huaxi Park).

It was a good day with the most pedometer steps thus far in one day on this trip – 30,377!!