Xingping

After a 25 hour train ride and sitting 2 hours in the bus we made it to Yangshuo. Out of the bus we got attacked by taxi drivers who knew the way to our hostel for only 150 rmb (about 17 euro). Till know, our most expensive ride was about 20 and took about half an hour. We had booked a hostel just outside of this city in a village called Xingping, or that’s what we thought. Tired from travelling and the taxi drivers we found out it’s 30km away and we just missed the last bus.

Back to the taxi drivers the prices already dropped a bit. A young guy who’s English was decent would take us for 70 rmb by motorbike. We went for it and 5 minutes later we were on our way with 3 people on his bike, one backpack sideways over the gas tank and the other on Jeff’s back. He was sitting behind the seat on a metal frame. Driving on sand roads in the dark with potholes the size of the bike we were happy to make it in little over an hour.

The next few days we discovered Xingping and surrounding, mostly by rain. Hoping for better weather and our planned hike we came for. This area is famous for her karst mountains. Scenery so beautiful they put it on their 20 RMB billet.

Waiting for hiking weather we went to a market. Not our first market experience but definitely the most impressive. The first shock was a calf on the back of a motor bike that was delivered to one of the butchers. In only a few minutes only the skin was left. The rest was put in sellable pieces of meat. The real shock was yet to come. A dog, frozen in running position and stripped from his fur was laying around for sale. We arrived in the area where dog is on the menu.

After a few days we finally had good weather for our hike. Our plan was to take a bamboo (the local form of transportation; boats that were originally made of bamboo) to a village a few km upstream and walk back. Although we were bothered every day we got out of the hostel by women saying “bamboo, bamboo”, this day it seemed impossible to get one. As determined as we were, we inverted the route and started walking in absolute beautiful nature. Surrounded by Pomelo trees, Orange trees and Karst Mountains we are inhaling the silence and awesome atmosphere. A good 5 hours and 16km further we discovered that a bamboo for the way back was also hard to get. Apparently the river was closed for bamboos due to a government tour on the Li River. We had to wait an hour to finally take a bamboo that would take us secretly over the river till only 4 km away from our hostel. It was almost perfect and so much better than walking 16km back. It was a long day but the scenes were stunning and definitely worth it.