Our rest day in Yangshuo turned out to be a great day.
We were up early to head upriver for a bamboo raft ride through the karst mountains. Hardly anyone else at the hotel was awake.
A group of women were washing clothes across the river from the hotel grounds.
The grounds of the Yangshuo Resort are well maintained, and peaceful while the children slept. Later, families and kids filled the hotel with laughter and chatter. This is a favorite resort for Golden Week vacationers.
We traveled about 20 minutes by road to reach the put-in point for the bamboo river rafts.
Lots of rafts were ready for early morning customers.
Steve and Mary Jane carefully stepped raft to raft to get to their assigned "deck" chairs.
Randy and Marilyn partnered up.
Our rafts were the first ones out this morning.
Dave and I settled into our chairs and said hello...
...to the young man who poled us down the river. We paid the concession owner 300 RMB ($50USD) each for the raft, then paid the poler 20 RMB to take us back downriver to our hotel.
The karst mountains rising up from the river banks provided a terrific backdrop for farm villages and...
farm animals.
But mostly we had a quiet and serene float trip.
Is this man walking on water?
No. He's actually walking across a man-made weir. Our poler knew just were to pass easily over the top so we didn't get stuck.
Some entrepreneurial folk set up concession stands on floats and islands. It was too early for us to need refreshments, so we passed by without stopping.
Everywhere we turned, there was a great picture be had.
Steve and Mary Jane
Boz and Janis
This women was taking refreshments to her stand.
At first it appeared that this concession stand was partly underwater, but in truth it was just past a little weir, so the water level was about 2 feet lower.
Early morning was a great time for the boat trip. Dave and I were going to skip the trip in favor of sleeping in, but Yingchu and Green convinced us that it something special; that all Chinese school kids read of the Yangshuo River and the surrounding mountains and hope to be able to visit and take this raft trip. We were not disappointed, something to remember that will likely not b repeated in our lives.
We spent the morning in the floating company of Mary Jane, Steve, Boz and Janis. As we approached the landing area on the hotel grounds, we tried to tell our polers to pull over and let us off. At first, they pretended not to know what we were saying and floated down one more weir. Then they asked for more money! We were being held hostage. Dave sternly told the man to take us to shore, as did Steve. They complied, and we were able to disembark at the hotel.
Steve got a nice picture of us.
Some others were not as fortunate as us and did not recognize the hotel grounds. Randy and Marilyn wound up floating all the way into town and had to take a taxi back to the hotel. Oops.
We had a great breakfast and then relaxed for the rest of the day.
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