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MeznG. In the air, on the road, river or sea again
This morning we are taking a flight to Guilin. It's only a 90 minute flight and we depart at 10.50am. It's an easy flight and we are Meg at the airport by our local guide for Guilin and the bus. Our luggage us to be delivered straight to our hotel as we are going direct to the limestone caves. Guilin is situated in Southern China on the banks of the River Li and it's surrounded by Karst Mountains. The underground is a maze of caves and we take a 40 minute walk through one this afternoon. It would be quite spectacular but the natural atmosphere has been spoilt by the amount of coloured lights that have been put in to highlight the formations. I think it spoils it. It's about 30 degrees here and quite humid but not raining. After the saves we are taken to the Zoo to see the Pandas. We are fortunate that they are both eating their bamboo and are quite active. They could do with a good wash as they don't look anything like the black and white ones in the photos. Apart from the Pandas which are looked after quite well, the rest of the zoo leaves a bit to be desired. The animals don't look at all well cared for and live in really yucky conditions, it's quite sad. We arrive at our hotel which again exceeds our expectations. We have a very large room and an exceptionally large bed. Tonight after dinner we are going to see a demonstration of fishing with the cormorants. The cormorants are birds who fish naturally in the wild for their own survival but for over one thousand years local fishermen have been using them as a method to catch fish for them. The neck if the bird is tied so that the bird can't swallow the fish. The fisherman paddles out on his bamboo raft and the birds dive in the water. They use their sense of smell to find the fish and then under water they are so fast they catch them in their beaks. The cormorants then return to the raft and hop back up and the fisherman retrieves the fish from the throat if the bird and off he goes again. This method of fishing is not widely used today but the art has been preserved to show other generations about the past. Tomorrow we are taking a boat along the River Li to Yangshou where we will spend 2 nights.
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