Guro and Caroline Blog

Continuation

Have moved on to Lijiang now, another beautiful, if quite touristy place.
Anyway, back to Dali. Had a lovely dinner at the Highlander hostel. Several dishes on a spinning table. Am liking this sharing all and getting to taste everyones food policy. Then chocolate cake and wine (me and Michelle decided we were all beered out).
After breakfast and lunch sorting the next morning, we set off for our trek up to the 3600meter pinic spot. Straight up for 3 hours was the warning. So when the path split, we obviously choose the most straight up one! Then denied being lost for about an hour before turning around... By then we had disturbed all the spiders on a holy Buddhist mountain, almost given a random local a heart attack and started to leave little twiggs shaped as arrows to remember our route. Still have no idea what the local person was doing up there... no other sign of sivilisation.
Found the path again though, and kept going up. But was about 2pm then, so had to turn around soon. Couldn't get to the picnic spot, so in the end we just sat down on the path. Not a heavily travelled route - we didn't see anyone the whole day! Beautiful though, and a fantastic view of Dali and lake Er'Hai.
Back down by five, dinner at 6.30, in bed by 8pm....
Jessica and Jeff that we met the first night up there, told us the sunrise was gorgeous, and not to early at about seven. But when the alarm went off in the morning, 2 very relieved heads realised it was raining and fell back on the pillow :)
Spent most of that day enjoying the little stove and the 2 puppies at the Higherland, hoping it would stop raining before we had to decend.
Back in Dali we went for our usual five o'clock lunch at a place recommended by the rough guide. Probably tried ordering about 5 dishes each from their very large menu, before we hit something they actually had! Topped it all when they didn't have chocolate cake though... Considered getting back up the mountain, but headed for our Dali hostel to watch x-men 3 on dvd instead.
The next day we finally did what everyone else in China does, we got bicycles!!! Super mountainbikes (much better than the one at Coniston), and high spirits. Headed north along the lake and into the littlew villages. Very cool! Narrow narrow lanes, lovely courtyards and no other tourists! Everyone are so sweet, saying hi and waving as we pass. Even the people working in the fields. They are just replanting (?) the rice after harvesting, so all seem very busy. Me and Michelle got to see very closely after i decided i had had enough of cobblestone roads and dragged Michelle with me into the fields, balancing ourselves and our bike on about 30 cm of dirt with water on both sides... Not my best idea :)
Had to hurry home after that as Michelle was getting hungry (a dangerous state of mind for her and her surroundings) and the thunder and lightening coming towards us was speeding up rapidly. 2 minutes after we were inside cafe de jack for dinner it started pouring down...
I then spent the rest of the evening and night vomiting, but am blaming the breakfast for that.
Next day all was brighter and we headed of to Lijiang!! We're going to Tiger Leaping Gorge tomorrow, so will let you know more later!!
lots of love again and thanks for all the comments!!
G&C

posted by Guro @ 12:12