Thursday, November 26, 2009

Bamboo Rafting

On the second day of our trip we were able to take a bamboo raft tour of the stunning karst mountains along the Li River. It was soooooo cool. It was raining that day, and so there was a lot of fog and mist surrounding the peaks, and it gave a wonderful effect to the scenery. It was like we were traveling through the Misty Mountains in Lord of the Rings haha. Sadly, the fog made it really hard to capture the mountains on camera and still give them justice. They are so hard to describe. Just trust me that they are astonishing.
 
Our guide was really funny. He had laminated pictures of the mountains we were seeing, and every few minutes he would hand us a couple pictures and start going off in Chinese, like we knew what he was saying. He would just sit there, talking and pointing up a storm, while we just nodded our heads at him. And then he would light up a cigarette. I swear he went through a whole pack on our boat ride. It was gross. He was a funny old man though.
 
Another funny story on our boat ride: It was raining, right? And there were lots of other rafts going up and down the river while we were. We passed another raft going in the opposite direction, and one of the guys had put a plastic bag over his head to keep the rain out! A plastic bag! Haha! I thought it was common sense to NEVER do that, but... it seems like a good idea, I guess... until you pass out lol. Too bad he was going the other way.. I really wanted to see how that whole plan worked out for him.
 
But it was so cold! It was about 8 degrees Celsius (I'm not sure what that is in Fahrenheit..) and all we had were thin jackets. It was freezing in the rain on a raft in a river. We loved that bamboo raft, but it felt nice to get off and get warm and dry again. We all ended up buying North Face coats at a market that night, along with hats, gloves and scarves. We were really cold, if I didn't get that point across very well. But the next day we were all snuggly and warm in our coats!  

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