Chinese Paradise

October 12th--Wow! I think we have found paradise in China. It's just amazing to know that a place like this exists in the smog and chaos of China. We had a great night of sleep with a very dark room and wonderful air conditioner. After waking up and enjoying the view from the balcony, we headed down to eat breakfast outside by the river. After stuffing ourselves full, we decided to start the day with a bike ride. This time Abby wanted to ride the tandem bike so her and Mike were on that one. Austin and I rode the same bike as yesterday with him in the seat on the back. We rode about 30 minutes to an area where they have the bamboo rafts. As we rode up to this area, we were immediately approached by many locals to buy flowers and water guns. Mike finally gave in to the flower head pieces for Abby and me. They were actually pretty fun to wear while floating down the river. We purchased our tickets for the rafts and were escorted to our rafts. Our bikes were even loaded onto the rafts. The rafts are only for 2 people so we had to separate. Abby and I were on one together and Austin and Mike were on the other. But, it didn't feel like we were that far apart because we all floated down the river side by side. It was such a peaceful and surreal feeling just relaxing down the river. We definitely found our most unique spot to purchase a drink...it was from a lady on a bamboo raft in the middle of the river. The ride was a little over an hour and filled with some excitement when we approach short drop offs that we had to go over. I mean it was definitely no waterfall, but I guess what you would call a mini one. Along the ride, both kids enjoyed putting their feet in the water and catching river grass up out of the water. About halfway down the river, a nice lady handed Austin her water gun. I guess she had exceeded its use. So, the kids enjoyed playing with it the rest of the way. We were dropped back off right at the Mountain Retreat and at this point, it was lunch time. We settled in on the bamboo tables to order lunch. We had a quick lunch before leaving at 2:00 for the Silver Cave. It was about a 30 minute drive to the cave, but it was definitely not a boring 30 minutes. I do believe this one goes down as one of the most interesting things we've seen so far...along the side of the rode was a man walking totally naked. We came up behind him, but I had to turn around as if I didn't know what I was going to see from the front of him. Wow! All four of us were in shock and our driver never acted like it phased him at all. All I could think was "I guess that's normal around here. In the States, you'd be arrested." Shortly after our nudity experience, we arrived at the Silver Cave. It took a couple of minutes for our driver to get a hold of someone to take us into the cave, but once he did, we climbed the stairs up to the entrance and went inside. There were parts of the cave that were just like any other cave, but the middle part was unbelievable. There was a section that had a reflecting pool in it. The reflection in the pool made the cave look like it went down forever. It is hard to describe and the pictures don't do it justice, but it was amazing to see. It took us about an hour to go through the cave and we were back in the car heading back to our hotel. We got back a little after 4:00 and still had some time before dinner. So, we hopped back onto bikes and just went exploring this time. Abby and I were on the tandem bike this time. She was the tour guide and directed us down some rodes that we hadn't been down. It was about a 30 minute ride before we went back for showers. After showers, we went to dinner and then off to see a show called "Impression, Sanjie Liu". The process was a little crazy. First we got into a rickety van with a wild driver. The van bounced all over the ride while passing cars left and right. But, we arrived safely and were escorted to the ticket area. We definitely had a language barrier with our driver and couldn't understand what was going on. Finally, we figured out that we were being thrown into a tour group where we would get our tickets. Some random lady finally gave us our tickets to the show and off we went. At first we were trying to keep up with this tour group, but then realized that we had our seat assignments and were back to being on our own, which we like. We found our seats easily and apparently only Mike and I had seats so the kids had to sit in our laps. The show is set in a riverside amphitheater with the Li River and karst hills as the backdrop. The show was about an hour long and a mix of floodlights, singing and processions with over 200 bamboo rafts in the water at once. It was very impressive. It was on such a grand scale, it reminded you of a Disney production. After the show, we made it back to our driver for our return ride home.