Guilin and Yangshuo – all the green you can have! (Part 2).
Day 3
The last (full) day we decided to dedicate to the famous rice terrace.
We booked the tour via the guesthouse again, and we set out at around 8:30 am and after 1 hour driving we suddenly stopped.
Inside the park
After a short chitchat with the driver we arrived to a small mini tour which is supposed to show us the different cultures and way of living of ancient Chinese people.
The long haired girls in action
You see the long haired girls brushing their long hair, and people hitting drums and a girl singing, that’s it.
Working the fields
Green terraces everywhere in different shade, old and beautiful houses, people working their fields and magnificent mountains as far as your eye can reach.
Once you get there, you can go have lunch if you haven’t eaten – but the food is so so, I recommend either eating in advance or skipping this lunch and settle for snacks you can buy in the village.
From the top (almost)
You can take marvelous pictures from up top, but if you ask me, the really beautiful pictures you can take on your way down – you’ll see a lot of spots you missed when you climbed (because you didn’t exercise and because you didn’t look back;) ).
We didn’t eat in a restaurant – we preferred trying some street food.
As mentioned in the first part of this post – there are a lot of tasty things to eat there, so we tried some more chicken on a stick and tasty skewers, a good and light ending for a long day.
Beautiful rice terrace – amazing usage of the land by the locals!
Day 4
The famous elephant in action
The last day we did not have much time on our hands as our flight back to Beijing was at noon (12:00), so we woke up early and headed to the famous ‘Elephant Trunk park’.
To tell you it’s special and the elephant trunk was amazing? I cannot. But I can say that the park is really nice – one of the nicest parks I’ve seen in China.
You will see a lot of elderly doing sport, green all around and cool statues wherever you look.
As a cool bonus you have this big rock that resembles an elephant trunk, and that’s about it with regards to the elephant trunk – don’t keep your hopes high.
Statues inside the park
If you will go all the way around the park you can go stand right by the trunk in a man-made cave, pretty cool.
After finishing the park we headed back to the guesthouse to take our stuff and went straight to the airport.
Note that the taxi back to the airport is fixed priced (as far as I understood) so you might as well get the taxi booked via the guesthouse – it will be the same price and more convenient – assuming you chose taxi as your way of transportation.
That’s about it, after Guilin we came back to Beijing and had only our memory (and pictures) to ponder upon.
I can warmly recommend going to Guilin and Yangshuo – there is much more to do than we did, depending on the duration and age.
There is a cool rafting, mountain climbing, rappelling and you can do plenty of tracks in the rice terrace area (between the villages, 2-3 days and more).
So go out and explore! because you live only once.
Have a good one.
Some pictures I took during the trip:
