Macau-Guilin, and life on the bike!

First of all thanks for the encouragements! It feels great to get emails from the other side of the planet! I hope the cold of November is not to bad...anyways here are some news from fantastic China to cheer you up.







We are taking our first day off cycling since we left Macau (850 km in 9 days) and I must say the timing is good because it's also the first day of rain we've had so far. We have left the humongous highways and the road is more quiet now. The ecclectic mix of buses, trucks, scooters and various overloaded farming carts are still following us along the way, spitting their thick black fumes into the air.



We left the flatlands in Whuzou and climbed up steep hills in a beautifull scenery. The coutryside is busy with the rice harvesting season. My dad wishes he could have one of the hills like the ones surrounding Guilin in his backyard, for rock climbing!





The quality of the roads is surprisingly good and the day before we arrived to Yangshuo, I almost had to pinch myself: the road was like silk, no wind and the beautiful karst scenery all around us. The Chinese cities are bustling with construction work, large shopping avenues, stalls full of scooter parts, household goods, clothing garments, food... China is very dynamic. There are a lot of kids and babies and the elderly often look after them while the parents are at work.





The food.


It's serious business when you travel by bike. And when the time comes, every meal is like a new adventure. Often, we just don't have a clue of what's in the plate or if the cook understood our order. The result is somewhat interesting and almost always delicious. So far, we have tasted things that we would perhaps not tried if we had known...


-Pigs knuckles


-Fish skin


-Pigeon heads soup


-Chicken feet


-Intestines/very thick veins (we are still debating on the origin of the thing..) hotpot





The sweets are great and often made of sweetened kidney bean paste. In Guandong, we mostly survived on noodle soup, bought in small backalley stalls. The won ton here has nothing to do with kleenex soup, let me tell you. The Guanxi province includes more rice in the dishes and we had an enormous lamb chinese fondue shich, after a long cycling day, tasted like heaven.



We will leave tomorrow towards Longshen , in the Dragon Backbone rice terraces. Many hills ahead to climb in a rugged terrain. The next main city ahead is Guyan, the capital of Guizhou in about 10 days.



Our legs and bikes are doing fine for now.

Ni hao!