Travel Update, hiking, and pics

February 23, 2007

Hi!

We are now reaching the end of our 6-week trip. It has been great! We now have about a week to make it home again to Chengxian before we start teaching again. Since it is often very difficult to buy train tickets in China, we have started our home journey already, so and we hope we can make it home within 5 days or so.

Quick recap first: we started the first part of our trip in Thailand, and then we moved onto Chengdu, China, for a conference. Then we began this part of our trip, where we traveled south to Yunnan Province. First we went to Kunming, and then we moved on to Dali, which is a cute, old city.

The day we planned to leave Dali, Tomas unfortunately became very ill. He recovered within a day or so, for the most part, and then I caught it. We spent a few days in bed, missing out on the cute city and great shops! I managed the bus trip to the city of Lijiang, where we are now. After about 3 days we were both well again, thankfully.

In Lijiang we walked around the old city, over and over again, down the narrow, winding, cobblestone streets, all of which are lined with shops, restaurants, and cafés. As the days went on, more and more Chinese tourists arrived in huge tour groups, all of the people following the leader, who always carries either an umbrella or a flag! These tourists were here, like us, to experience the Chinese New Year here in Lijiang. We think many of these Chinese tourists are hilarious: just tonight we saw a Chinese man, in a cowboy hat (they all buy cowboy hats it seem!!!), posing on a horse, right in the middle of town, and pretending to shoot with a rifle while his wife took pictures.

Chinese New Year was unbelievable! At night we went with some friends up to a hilltop where we watched fireworks. But this was like nothing we had ever seen before! (We will write more about this later, and we will put a video out on our web page). There was no coordinated time for the fireworks, they just started, and they were everywhere, all at once! The entire city lit up and it sounded like it was a war zone.

The past few days we had the opportunity, and the good luck to have perfect, beautiful weather, to hike Tiger Leaping Gorge. (see attached pics). From the water below to the peak it is about 3900 meters! It was tiring, exhausting at times, but gorgeous and amazing nature. The trail was often very narrow and we hiked for 4-5 hours the first day, and 4 hours the second day, plus a 2-hour extra trip down to see the actual river. We spent two nights at guesthouses, which was like a mountain hut area, but where we ate, showered, and slept. It was a very relaxed and peaceful atmosphere. (The second night Ed Norton was also a guest at our tiny guesthouse...!) Some parts of the hike were actually scary due to the drop-offs, and even the ride home today in the mini-van was also a bit frightening (for me) at times, but now all is well and we have really enjoyed our days outside. During the day it could become quite warm in the sun, but at night it became very cold. (One night Tomas checked, and our room was 7.5 degrees C!!!) Thankfully, the beds have heating so even though our faces and heads are freezing cold, our bodies were nice and warm under the covers!

Now we will be traveling home to Chengxian for several days. We have updated our web page with some videos, but soon we will update even more with a lot more pictures from our travels, and videos as well.

Please keep in touch!!!
love
Rachel & Tomas

Lijiang old city by night

Tiger Leaping Gorge

Tiger Leaping Gorge

Tiger Leaping Gorge