More Adventures!

(Heather)

Douglas Adams once wrote, “It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression, ‘As pretty as an airport.’” Well, in our case, I’d actually tweak this saying, and have it read “It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression ‘As pretty as a sleeper train from Kunming to Dali.’”

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Fending Off Paparazzi in Yangshuo

(Tim)

First blog post of the trip, it feels good. So far the trip has been amazing and we are all having a great time. For the past two days, we have woken up to a nice western breakfast of fried eggs, ham, sausages, vegetables, and assorted baked goods. A great part about this trip is that we aren’t always bound to pre-determined sights. With our free time, we decided to hike up a mountain to visit an old, stone pagoda.

Yangshuo Adventures

(Max)

All right, so yesterday was quite the adventure. We started the day off with a nice early start at 7:45 a.m. when our tour guide, Summer, took us to the well-known Elephant Hill. About a fifteen-minute walk from the hotel, this natural rock structure resembles a massive elephant dipping its trunk into the Li River for a drink. Local myth tells that the elephant was a servant of the jade emperor and was sent down to earth, but when the elephant realized the beauty of Guilin, he decided to stay. After about a half an hour stay at this site we returned to the hotel where our driver took us to the very famous tour attraction, the Li River cruise. I can’t even start to describe the magnificence of what we witnessed on that four-hour tour.