May 31st “Let’s be brave and try another hill” said moi, all the while thinking to myself “not a big one”. We settled on a town and country walk, where we go up to the main road, turn right and then take the first right to cut across through the wilds. Today we thought we should share the village name where we turn off.
Looking through the village the uphill route is not too visible. On the right is our water stop when we approach from the other end having done the landfill walk.
In the village, every spare space is used, the first photo is a little farm plot. At least it is until someone builds their new house there. Also many villages seem to have multiple names. I think that is because a few years ago most of Wuzhishan didn’t exist and all that did was a lot of small villages around the bend in the river. The second photo is the village’s next name, what happened to 4 and 5 I don’t know.
Fun was next, or was it acting the goat. Here I am taking a photo of me looking in a mirror while Huan takes a photo of me taking a photo of me looking in a mirror!
We often show you what we think are “desirable residences”, well this one is an old army place. We think we could even create a small hotel inside, we never will of course.
For our next scene we have men at work, or should I say young man at work. Only one is up the tree, he cheated; if you look closely you can see his tree climbing spikes.
Just after this point we passed the worst of the up and set off through the woods.
You can see why, despite not being far from town and despite not being a very long walk this is one of our favourites.
Just to emphasise the point here is another collage.
Leaving the woods we rejoin civilisation at the fish farm restaurant, this is a view that we have never shown you before. It must be nice in the evenings.
Leaving the beauty of nature I showed Huan the murkier side of town.
I even offered to see if we could buy this new fangled oven thingy!
Here’s a poor fellow who seemed to have difficulty flying and was probably hoping that he wasn’t going to see the inside of the pot in the previous photo.
Soon we were approaching the next little village.
It looks almost deserted today, I’m not sure why.
Are you wondering what the name of this little village is? Well, it is the same as the two previous villages only this is #1.
Let’s finish off the day with Penelope Pitstop. “Who?” I hear you ask. Shame on you for not knowing the Wacky Races along with Dick Dastardly and Muttley, (cue mischievous, rasping laughter!) Anyway, Penelope has a new eco friendly car here.
June 1st “The Lift-Your-Spirits Quote Book” compiled by Allen Klein, ISBN 0-517-16309-8, published in 2001. This month’s quote comes from the chapter “Friendship”. Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light. (Albert Scweitzer) Bob’s PS – My light went out in 2003, it was rekindled by my best friend, my now wife.
Having had a little hilly walk yesterday I decided no hills were needed today nor any great distance so the riverside it was. The first thing we spotted was the maintenance company building a new shelter for our garbage bins.
I beat Eagle Eyes to this one!
However, she beat me to this one! I had to take the photo mind you.
Huan then tried to snap secret photos of me, I wasn’t successful in evading her.
If you look carefully at the last one you will see that I was trying to photograph another little lizard. Here it is trying to camouflage itself, I had to tweak the photo for you to see it.
The number of times I am asked to take photos of birds never ceases to irritate me. Invariably the bird in question is a) small and b) too far away. Hints for a new camera or lens fall by the wayside. However, today we succeeded, after a fashion.
Our last photo of the day, a motorbike that I am not allowed to
ride, in a colour that I like. There seems to be a thing in
June 2nd Today was supposed to be a day with hardly any pictures and maybe none at all. We failed. My wallet was desperately short of money, stony broke, completely empty, even the moths had left for better climes, so a trip to my bank was required. Luckily, this time, everything worked as it should and before long I was (a little) in the money again. Mind you, the exchange rate was not so good; it was down to 8.33 RMB to the pound. Happy to be ‘in the black’ again I decided to treat Huan to a burger, the video is here - https://youtu.be/KWNoZ_N0VoE
We had driven down to Sanya via
the mountain roads, it had been a long time, and it made a nice change from the
highway. However, the homeward trip was on the highway and we veered off at
Haitang Wan to see if we could see the sea. We had tried that years ago and
failed. First I had to point out some unusual trees to Huan, I have to say the
ones in
We had stopped off at the
I have to say that the view was much better once we climbed the steps.
There were nice walkways down the sides providing some respite from the sun, with some strategically placed stones to admire.
However, the place is in a bit of a state of disrepair. I was quite disappointed with all I had read about this bay, an up and coming international tourist destination. In the plaza even the tourist places are dead. This is the tourist bar and the tourist service centre.
My spirits rose though when I saw the sea with what I think is Wuzhishou island in the distance.
As usual we tried snapping each other, I only managed one, Huan took many!
It did feel nice to have my feet in the sea again; it’s been far too long. Looking at this lovely expanse of beach I think we may have to come down a little more often.
They also do helicopter trips which initially I was pleased to hear. A long time ago I used to fly in helicopters a lot, as a passenger of course, and I loved every minute of it. We asked the price and the reply was ¥198.00 per person, quite reasonable I thought. That was until we found that the price quoted was for a one minute flight. Yes, you did read that correctly.
And that was that, back to Wuzhishan we headed, having had a wonderful day on the beach. We got lost to start with, our satnav does not have up to date highways shown but it only meant a fourteen kilometre round trip to get back on the right route. Arriving back in our hometown we went to a restaurant chosen by the Minister of Food.
It looks good doesn’t it? I wasn’t impressed though, Huan ordered radish and beef soup! Still, I suppose it did fill the gap and we had fruit and coffee when we reached home.
June 3rd When I was younger I used to drive for hours and hours, sometimes over twenty four hours, and never felt too tired in the days after. Nowadays, I drive to Sanya and back and feel exhausted the next day. I think I’ll blame the bed, it can’t be old age!
So today, not feeling in the mood for a long walk and also not needing a whole lot more photos we stuck to the riverside. The first ‘sight’ was a home hairdresser.
Electric cars and their decals came next. In the case of the first one, the driver was there but had no idea what was written on his car or why anime should be mixed with German “Happy New Year”. He said it was his children that did it. The second one is easier to understand, after all Tom and Jerry are internationally famous. Which one do you prefer?
Despite today being Friday some of the Saturday market stalls were open today. Huan said it’s probably because of the holiday https://vibrantdot.co/dragon-boat-festival-interesting-facts-and-fun-games-that-the-ancient-chinese-played/ It was a sparse market so avoided photos because of course we will be there again tomorrow. Bigfoot needed to have her photo taken though, she’d had a haircut but only on her body.
Admiring this next one Huan told me that I should add it to the
day’s portfolio. Well, it is yellow so I agreed. If the engraving is correct it
is a 350cc bike. The last time I tried to ride one of those I was a wimpy
teenager at
Now what did I say about sleep and younger days? Another afternoon siesta was required today, two hours for me and an hour for Huan. She is normally fine with 30 minutes or less. Do you think we can still blame the bed, maybe buy a new mattress?
June 4th Saturday is market day down by the river and so off we set. The first thing we noticed was a large empty space in the middle of the town which is normally full of vegetable vendors. It looks as if the authorities have had another clampdown.
We did find one or two traders on the right hand side though, probably ready to run at the first sight of trouble. One was selling a pineapple. Yes, you read that correctly, a pineapple. She said it was a wild one and was used more for medicine than eating. It was as big as a football!
There were hardly any market stalls at all today, none before the entrance, only one or two on the main stretch and then a few after the exit. In the middle, as it wasn’t busy, I got Huan to stop for an ear cleansing.
It would appear that Huan has a perforated ear drum, I think you can see that in the top left photo. PS Her ears were not as dirty as they looked, the camera magnifies a lot!
Because Huan had been such a ‘brave girl’ I treated her to an ice cream. Of course I had to have one as well, just to keep her company. I had been trying to get her to try one of these for ages, they are very cheap, 36p each, and taste very good. (For non native English speakers, p = pence.)
June 5th Not having had much in the way of walking this week we decided that a countryside walk would be the order of the day today. My first job was to keep Huan from finding too many bugs and lizards before we reached our destination. The scenery in the countryside helped.
Before long we were off the road and onto the tracks.
Unfortunately, our route had been blocked so we had to return to the hard top. We took the right fork, or the road straight ahead.
Huan insisted that I show you the farm machinery, she thought it was interesting that there were two tractors and one harvester in such a small field.
The road after this went three ways, we knew where one route would take us and that was even further away from home, too late for today. The middle road led to a school, possibly a school for teachers but we’re not sure. That left the third route for us, which went in the general direction of where we wanted to go, home.
Unfortunately, the road disappeared and we had to walk between the fields. It is not as easy as it looks when the foliage has grown enough to hide the raised banks.
I had a rest while I was waiting for Huan to remove tons of needles from her skirt. She thought my pose required a photograph.
It was my turn to find a bug today, quite a pretty one.
On the right route now, we headed towards a water stop in the village, the one where I am famous! On the way we saw that farmers can read the weather better than we can. They were raking out rice to dry in the sun, and they were right, it didn’t rain today!
Soon we were on our last ‘under the trees’ trail.
Yaay, another bug for me!
After the very necessary water stop and on our way through the village we heard the plaintive cry of 罗博特 (LuóBóTè) coming from somewhere. It turned out to be from a tree where four youngsters were doing something strange. Huan asked what they were doing and it seems they were keeping ants away from the fruit! I wonder if they have a 24 hour shift!
Let’s finish off the day with another collage, this time of the road to and through the last village, and over the irrigation canal on our way home.
We succeeded in having a decent walk today, too decent for Huan, it was 10.22 kilometres. Mind you, she didn’t need an OAP nap after lunch whereas I did!
June 6th No walkies today, only shopping and computer work. The day before yesterday we had a power failure which, because our UPS gave up the ghost a while ago, played havoc with the computer. Actually, it was only Picasa, but that was enough. A lot of the thumbnails had disappeared and the names database had become corrupted too. Luckily, the internet can be a great help these days and I found a way to rebuild the database without having to uninstall and then reinstall Picasa. It will take some time for the names database to get back to where it was but at least the thumbnails are back. That means that I can show Huan photos when necessary and also of course that I can upload today’s post.
Huan and I sometimes wonder about your ‘weeks’, some of you we know from Facebook, some we don’t. If you start a Blog, we will follow you too, if not, just comment now and then how our life resonates, or doesn’t, with yours.
For me, I have one more week until my next round of tests after which, hopefully, I will be able to walk further and more often, go out for meals more often and maybe even eat and drink those things that are banned, occasionally. See you soon, bye for now!
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