Guilin is where we met up with
William Yu and five other photographers for his Guilin-Li River & Guizhou Ethnic Minority Cultures Photo Tour. The tour begins in Guilin, moves onto the Guizhou Ethnic Minority area, and we depart from Guiyang Airport to return home.
Dan and I arrived just after midnight which gave us a little time to sleep and then explore Guilin before meeting the group in the evening.
We woke to a beautiful view of Guilin's Sun Pagoda in the lake across from the Guilin Lijiang Waterfall Hotel. On the taxi ride from the airport monolithic shadows loomed out of the midnight dark as we sped the way to the hotel. With morning light, those monolithic pinnacles are visible throughout the city. This part of Guilin city is known for its two rivers (Lijiang and Peach Blossom rivers), four lakes, and its thousands of
Karst mountains shaped like cones, towers and pinnacles scattered across the region.
The city residents, more awake than we were, did Tai Chi, watered plants, strolled, moved along the roads on scooters. We arrived in China just after the 70th anniversary celebration of The Peoples' Republic of China. Many of the floral displays were hold overs from that celebration.
Feeling hungry, we stopped in at the Rosemary Cafe because it looked like we wouldn't have to struggle too hard to order something to eat. The Rosemary Cafe is a place that would attract English Speaking ex-pats to it: English language signs and familiar menu items. It turned out to be a great choice.
We walked to the top of Elephant Hill to see more of Guilin.
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The elephant trunk part of Elephant Hill |
To add some "authenticity" to a portrait in front of Elephant Hill, for a fee one could hold a pole with two cormorants sitting on either end. I didn't see any takers. The cormorants' keeper kept pushing each of the cormorants back to the pole's end each time they inched their way toward the middle of the pole and each other.
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View from Elephant Hill |
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Another View from Elephant Hill |
Met up with the rest of the group: two from San Francisco, one Czech Republic, an Aussie from Singapore, one from Michigan, and us. Our photo leader, William Yu, lives in San Francisco. At dinner we heard the distressing news: a 5:00 am departure tomorrow.
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