Cruising the River Li

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We spent a few hours cruising down the River Li between Guilin and Yangshuo. It was great to just relax and let the pictures come to us.

The landscape along the river is hard to describe in terms of anything else I have seen. Some of my fellow travellers called it "otherworldly" - a term that was used a couple of times during our China trek.

There is a lot of activity at the river, though civilization's impact on the river banks (at least what you can see from the river) is light. There are access roads that run right into the river at regular intervals. Frequently, there were huge piles of red bricks on the ramp right where they meet the river. We saw people loading bricks onto trucks like in this picture. This particular style of truck is sort of the Ford F-150 of China. They are everywhere. They are all pretty much in this condition. They are all this safe (Yes, that is the engine flywheel just hanging out there in space). The women at the river bank are cleaning freshly slaughtered chickens.

You encounter plenty of tourist traffic on the river. The larger boats frequently have kitchens outside at the rear of the boat. You will also encounter stretches of the river where there are lots of smaller boats for hire with tourists shooting each other with water guns from boat to boat.

I'll wrap up for today with a traditional fisherman and his Cormorant birds somewhere along the river.