38…39…
Saturday, February 21st, 2009by Rob
Yangshuo, China
Yangshuo is a glitzy, boutique tourist-town for sure. However, it is also a fantastic launching pad into rural China. So today, we ate an early breakfast (yes, we were eating before nine today LOL!) and sorted ourselves out some bikes to hire for the day. To be precise, six bikes: two tandems and four singles. In case you are wondering, one of the tandems had a baby seat on the back, as did one of the singles. That would be ten seats for the tribe. We didn’t even have to haggle about the price, and all the bikes had adjustable seats (yay!) and working brakes and gears – that is, one speed. Ah well, less to go wrong! Kgirl10 confessed she was nervous about the ride after our experiences in Chiang Mai with over-sized bikes – but this morning everyone managed to get a reasonably fitted bike – even I did not need to adopt the previously employed grasshopper-pose when riding.
We had decided to try and ride out to Dragon Bridge (Yulong Qiao). Yangshuo is a small town, and you would think finding out which way to go would have been easy. You see, you can get there via an easy 12 km ride up the main drag, but we wanted to get there via a cross-country route along the river. However, most maps of the town are horribly inaccurate, and completely not-to-scale… so it took some working out. The GPS is no use either, thanks to the Chinese government’s decision to offset all Chinese GPS maps so that they will not work with non-Chinese units. Grrr!!! Thankfully Rach, with her iron memory, sussed out the directions and we managed to fend off the touts, who were all insisting we really needed to employ their tour guide services to be able to go anywhere.
“Very far, hard to get to!”
“It’s OK, we will try!”
And so we pedalled off, for what would turn out to be a mammoth 38 km jaunt cross-country, through rural towns, over rock roads, through mountain passes and along main highways!
We did take one wrong turn at the beginning of our trip, but a quick glance at a tout’s map got us back on track. Only a few kilometers out of town, we were already awe-struck at the beauty of this area. It truly is an amazing place, and although the constant haze made things a bit gloomy (and frustrated the photographers in our midst), it gave the whole area a somewhat surreal and mystical atmosphere.
Hills jutted vertically up into the sky all around, and the mist hung off the peaks. The river was oily calm and was a deep green – mainly due to the thick mat of river weed that lined its bed. Then we zig-zagged through small hamlets, across rice paddies, through orange orchards and through rocky crags. Just beautiful. In places our voices echoed off the sheer rock walls – further accentuated by a certain group of young children yodeling for effect!
The Dragon Bridge was continually elusive. We kept asking where it was… and locals kept nodding and pointing ahead. We continued to ride. We lunched, and kept on riding in the direction all hands had pointed. Still no sign of any bridge. At 2pm, we crested a small rocky mountain pass – not only was there no sign of any bridge, but the river disappeared around a bend in the canyon. A passing rider called out the bridge should only be half an hour further in the direction we were heading. A family conference ensued. To turn back now meant we should be able to get home by 5 at the latest. However, if the bridge WAS just down the road, it meant we could take the main road home and cut our return trip down by half… but what if we didn’t find it?
In a rash decision we all decided to push on. We had come this far… we really DID want to see this bridge! On through more small communities… more fields, and then we heard the sound of heavy traffic. Oh well, at least we may have found the main road back to town! Sure enough, the main highway appeared around a corner, and we stopped to ask another friendly local where Dragon Bridge was. He pointed down the highway in the opposite direction to Yangshuo, holding up two fingers. Two… hmmmm. Two hours? Two kilometers? Having got this far, we decided to continue for a few more minutes to see. Sure enough, ten minutes later and two further stops to check directions, we eventually came across a sign pointing to Dragon Bridge – 1.8 km down a side road. A further ten minutes of riding and we came across another sign indicating our target down an even smaller lane.
Hardly daring to believe we were actually at our goal, we rode through a series of dusty, narrow, mud-brick-house-lined-lanes and exhaustedly pulled up at the riverside – and to the right was Dragon Bridge. OK, so it may not be the fanciest looking piece of historic architecture you have ever seen, but the combination of the effort to get to there, and the superb scenery en-route meant that we were all like little children at having finally arrived. Come to think of it, some of us were little children – they had done so well. Constructed in 1412, it looks as good as the day it was built. The view from the modest crest was stunning. In celebration we cracked open our final packet of crackers and munched away at the base of the bridge.
After a short rest we mounted up again to bike home. By now there were quite a few weary legs and more than one tender bum! To everyone’s credit, despite two or three children getting “the knock” (jelly-knee) on the way home, we managed to keep up a reasonable pace and arrived back in Yangshuo just after 4pm. An amazing effort, and an amazing day of memories for my final day of being 39. Tomorrow I will wake up a 40-year-old. Hmmmm. Hence the title. 38 km, 39 years….. Tonight I feel like I am a bit older than that! We will all rest well.
rayres