The drive back to Guilin only takes 2 hours so is considerably quicker than the boat trip here. We drove through some lovely scenery and were allowed to get off the coach just once when I begged to be able to photograph an old boy tending his paddy fields (everyone else was more than happy to stop).
When we first arrived he was splashing water over his legs.
Unfortunately I wasn't at the right angle to see what he was actually doing.
I hate to think how heavy these metal buckets must be.
It certainly looked back breaking work.
I think he rather enjoyed his 5 mins of fame posing for the western tourists.
Further down the track I'm guessing the owner of this cart saw us out of the corner of her eye as she wisely disappeared into the bushes.
Orthetrum pruinosum
There were a lot of these bushes growing the other side of the track and I'd seen it quite a few times in the cities, always neatly trimmed. I recognised it as something I've grown (and killed) in England and finally was able to identify it as Loropetalum chinense.
A few snaps through the coach window.
It's definitely a very fertile area.
En route we stopped at the Reed Flute Caves which got their name from the reeds growing outside which can be made into flutes! It took about an hour to go round and as before I'll just show the photos without much comment as there isn't much to say except that the lighting and colours were just amazing.
As you can probably guess, this was meant to look like a penguin.
Just like a huge gold nugget hanging down.
This was a vast cavern with water running through.
I know I usually don't like people in my shots, but I've left this guy in to give scale.
I must agree with Raymond they were vastly superior to the Snow Cave.
Back in the Guilin now and I don't know if you can see the pillion passenger, but she's carrying a wide screen TV!
Why not set your veg stall up on the zebra crossing.
We haven't seen many kiddies on the back of scooters so far.
No idea what these pavement figures were all about, there was another one (orange) but a tree got in my way.
