Guilin

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  Guilin, Guangxi Zhuang, China
Monday, December 15, 2008

We arrived in Guilin early this morning, and went straight to Flowers Youth Hostel. We dropped off our stuff, and I begged Eric to take a "20 minute" nap, which backfired and became two hours.

We hauled our bums out of bed and began looking around for bikes to rent. As bike theft is high in this city, we wanted the cheapest bikes we could find and with a low security deposit. It only took about 20 minutes to find that, and, well, sometimes you get what you pay for. The bikes survived a day of casual touring, but that's about all the strength they had in them!

Guilin is known for its karst limestone peaks that lie in the surrounding area. The peaks aren't so much mountains, but are more like very steep tall hills. They surround the city and are very picturesque.

First we went to Daxiangshan, or Elephant Mountain

biking in guilin

. This mountain got its name sine it looks like an elephant with its nose in the water of the Li River. Seeing the elephant might take a little imagination, but the park was nice regardless. We hiked around the mountain and the area.

Actually, the fisherman were the most intrigueing thing about the area. The traditional boats are made of 5 long bamboo pieces, stuck together side by side. A man stands in the middle of the boat with a perplexing dual open-ended net. Instead of a paddle, he has a long stick wit a blunt clubblike end. The man, standing on the boat, pushed the net into the water. Then he pushed the blunt-ended stickinside the net, and pulls up a fish. You'd think a net with a hole both in the top and bottom ends wouldn't work. Yet somehow it did. The man moved a rock on the boat, revealing the hollowness of the bamboo. There was a splashing inside-he kept his catches witin the hollow structure of the bamboo boat! He dropped in the fish he just caught, put the stone back over the hole, and pushed the boat forward with the blunt stick. Then he plunged the net in the water in search of his next fish.

On the shoreline there was another bamboo boat. The only occupants on this boat were a pair of sleepy cormorants. I saw this once on a National Geographic show or something when I was a kid

cormorants

. It looked really cool, and I was glad to see the fishing birds in person. Some fishing teams consist of a fisherman and a handful of birds. The birds have a string/collar around their necks. The birds dive underwater, catch fish, and then swim back to the boat. The fisherman takes the fish from the cormorant, and the bird goes back underwater for more. As a reward to the bird, the man takes the collar of the bird and feeds it some fish. This goes on all night.

We biked to a large park in Guilin (name forgotten) and walked around that park as well. We climbed some large hills, and looked at the city and the river from above. As we were headed towards a cave, we ran into some monkeys. The last time we ran into wild monkeys on Emei Shan, the little buggers turned out to be expert pickpockets and I wound up getting bitten. This time, I wasn't so excited to see a monkey. We grabbed a couple of sticks and rocks for self-defence, took a couple pictures, and kept on heading towards the caves.

The caves were good. they guide people through the caves, and our tour guide happened to speak some English. The cave itself was pretty cool. Our tour guide, however happened to point to a rock formation every 100m and tell is it looked like a fat rabbit, a lion, a tiger, a beautiful lady.... It was alright, but it got kinda old.

After the caves we stumbled upon a zoo on our way out. That was an accident, and I wouldn't recommend that stop to any animal lovers. The cages are small, the animals are plenty, and you get the idea.

We headed back for the hostel as it was now getting dark. We stopped by the bike rental place, and set up river rafting to Yangshuo for the next morning. We reserved our spots on the bamboo rafts, headed back to the hostel, and headed to bed.

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daxiangshan	gilin caves	guilin from above	monkey
night pagoda	park	the birds

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