April 30th Huan was happy today, I suggested a ‘bus and walk’ so that meant she could use her OAP bus pass, twice in fact. We took the bus up to the villas around the lake.
We hadn’t gone far up ‘fourth road’ before Huan did her usual.
I then tried again for a ‘bid on the wire’.
This is not normally a lizard walk but Huan must be getting more efficient.
Behind the village she went for it again, with her phone and a cow.
Normally on this road we turn into the fish farm reservoir, go once round and then head back home. Today our plan was different; it was to continue on up the hill to where we thought there was another small reservoir.
From the turn off there was a lot of uphill walking, mostly in the shade mind you.
Soon we passed by this small village and we realised we had been wrong. There is no small reservoir at the end of this road. Having said that, we may well be proved wrong again at some time in the future.
This was the point at which we turned for home. A couple of guys putting in irrigation pipes at the side of the road told us that the road ended in two or three kilometres. Seeing the hill, and more in the distance, our decision was easy.
Walking back down the hill we heard voices and bells from down below. The cows were on the move with two farmers to help. How do they know which way to go when the farmers are behind them? At the top of the small road they all turned up the hill.
Not content with finding lizards on the way up, Huan had to have another go or two on the way down. This is the first handsome fellow, and then a little further down the hill, a not so colourful lady. She seems to have quite an unusually long neck.
After last week’s spider we found another one today, completely different to that one. I thought this one was dead until I tapped the fence just behind it. I then moved away, not far though. Is it a poisonous one too? I decided not to try and find out.
Our uphill and downhill walk was nine kilometres added to the before and after bus walks giving us over eleven. Naps were a priority after lunch.
Dinner was on me again, here’s the original recipe.
I’ve actually cooked this before and shared the photos with you. This time I modified it. Instead of pork chops I used hot-pot lamb slices and, because we had no tarragon, I added a jalapeno green pepper. Here it is almost ready in the pan.
It was served up on a bed of rice in bowls. Thankfully it went down very well with the boss!
May 1st Happy Mayday one and all, have fun going round the pole but do try and avoid going round the bend. (If you do that, you may well meet me!) I put my foot down this morning, quite a dangerous thing to do, and said we were only going around the town and the main drag. “Look at those birds” said SWMBO. Even if you don’t know exactly what the orders are, you still have to follow them!
For a change Huan then found me a butterfly instead of a lizard.
Down near the river we parted ways, Huan went along the riverside and I went along the road. I found a lizard, all on my own, with no help whatsoever!
Meanwhile Huan was trying to capture egrets and cows, unfortunately only with her phone. None of them turned out very well but I did like this one.
Walking back up the main road after we had reunited Huan made up for it by finding two more of our lizard friends. This time I managed to take the photos without a photo of my head and the camera lens being included.
To add to our paltry number of snaps for today we thought you might
like these two from the ethnic culture shop that has recently opened. We think
the first one is traditional Li wedding attire. For the second one we are
reluctant to make a guess. Maybe one of our
Even though we hadn’t left the town we still managed to make ten kilometres. With no hills on the way either we were reasonably happy with that. After the obligatory nap, we had a normal afternoon with Huan preparing dinner and me working on the computer. In fact I was busy uploading all my April photographs for my family. Normally I would have done this yesterday but since I had forgotten to upload March’s last month, that was done instead.
May 2nd This morning, looking out of the bedroom window, we thought that we would not be walking anywhere today. It’s not obvious in the photo, but it’s raining, a lot!
As is often the case, the weather
cleared up very quickly and we could go for a wander. I did stipulate that we
would just go round the river and lizard walk. Within minutes Huan found a
lizard, just over the second
Huan then went crazy, or perhaps it was the lizards that did that. Do they all need to come out and dry off after a rainstorm? We hardly ever see any on this side of the river, not so today!
“We need something else” my inner cameraman shouted, and I responded with a saxophonist.
Soon however, the director was at it again. The second one, instead of doing the usual and running away, just seemed to keep trying to get smaller and smaller behind the stone.
At this stage I made an executive decision, we would not continue down the side of the river that we call lizard alley. I thought I had enough on my plate for today and luckily for me, SWMBO agreed with me. Back towards home we went.
The love of my life still managed to find even more!
Now I am too lazy today to search Google for the living habits of lizards but if you want to let us know please don’t hesitate, comment away!
Being a Thursday, Chef Bob was on duty again but with no recipe this time. I had seen some kidney beans in the cupboard earlier this week so some kind of chilli was planned. The sausages that I had gone out to buy were supposed to be part of the mix. I didn’t tell you then but, the sausage man has, like the Xinjiang bread man, gone back up north. Luckily I had some other sausages in the freezer, they would do. Last night I made some tomato paste with one large tomato, a red jalapeno pepper and a teaspoon of hot paprika. To make today’s cooking easier I also boiled the bangers, then sliced then up and marinated them in the paste all night. Garlic, long onions and mushrooms were then cooked this afternoon before the mix from the fridge was added along with the kidney beans. All was then served on a bed of noodles, I passed the test!
May 3rd I had a plan last night that we would do one of Huan’s favourite walks today, Rendishan. However, this morning I was pretty slow to come back to life so we just went off towards Luobote and the countryside. Our route went alongside the irrigation canal to start with
Through the village we went where Huan went crazy with her phone. She tried taking a photo of me with a duck, maybe expecting me to try and pick it up or something. It was very skittish so I’m afraid I never got much nearer than this.
My bovine buddies were in residence and as usual always ready for a chat. Huan’s first photo included me but as the cows were looking at her I cropped me out.
She took so many photos that I had to resort to collages again. One photo was taken by me, can you tell which one it was.
All that was left was for me to say goodbye!
We were quite alone today, just the occasional farmer to pass the time of day with.
Almost back in the village and we spotted what I thought was our first millipede of the year. I did wonder why it wasn’t the usual red colour. Only after uploading the photo at home did I realise that it wasn’t a millipede, it was a ‘Great Eggfly Caterpillar
Soon another type of irrigation was part of our walk. A long time ago we raced up from a path on the left that you can’t see, to join this path and go back up to the village. We had been racing because a snake had frightened the life out of me!
I had been aiming at this end of the village to satisfy Huan’s insatiable cravings to see turkeys when we pass this way. Both the turkey and the chicken have borders on their portraits because I was taking pictures through gaps in the fence. The results look better this way.
Eventually we ended up on the road to somewhere so that we could go through town and see if any of the burger shops had a good ‘two-for-one’ deal that we could use for our weekend salad. Notice how busy the traffic is where we live!
Soon I was grovelling on the floor again before Huan had me looking skywards. There’s never a boring moment in our photographic world, at least not for me there isn’t!
Walking through the village towards the end of this road I saw a snake. It was not very big, maybe around 30cm, sort of stripey with some yellow at the head end. Whilst getting the camera ready and calling Huan it must have spotted me and scarpered. This was the location, just off the path on the left under some dry palm fronds. I didn’t search for it!
Back in town we took the tea street route.
Our last picture for today is perhaps a little sad. It is an owlet,
possibly a Collared Owlet. Not much info could be gleaned from the old gent who
owned it; he only spoke a
So our walk had been successful, very pleasant too, but our search for the weekend’s grub had been a failure. Not to worry, the Saturday market should be back in its normal location this week so we’ll try again tomorrow.
May 4th May the fourth be with you! For those (few) of you who don’t know, you can find more info here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Day. As for us, it was market day and for the first time in months it was back to the normal riverside location. Before we got anywhere near there we found an Australian mammal.
As we approached the far side of the market, we were a little worried by the road works that were still in place. Before the road works there were no market traders at all. There were some after but numbers seemed a little low, at least to start with.
As we progressed the number of stalls, and people, slowly increased.
Now it’s quiz time, can you identify the various types of fowl?
Although the side shops have not yet opened, there were more crowds and stalls as we reached the normal barrier. What it’s for I don’t know, perhaps a market authority control point.
Unusually, at least this is the first time we have seen it, there were a few fridges around today. Of course most meat was still on the backs of small motorbike trucks, easier to see and to choose.
In this next collage you will see me, chatting to a dog and its family. The family only seemed to know two countries. After asking me if I was American and then Russian, they were stumped for any other options. In the end I told them all dogs love English people so that’s where I was from!
The market extended quite a bit further down than in the past, maybe because of the road works still being in place at the other end.
Did we enjoy our ‘back to normal’ market walk? I must admit that we did, very much so. Quite a few market traders were happy to see us again, even though we never buy much. Many people stopped to say hello, one stranger asked for a photo, taken by his wife. Huan missed that one! All that was left for me to do was my Saturday duty; buy the lottery tickets for the weekend.
We started with a moped today, we finish with a car. Search ‘Kuromi’ to learn more.
May 5th Yesterday we finished with a car, today we start with one, or a pick-up anyway. I quite like to see these Great Wall pick-ups; they look so different to the ones we first saw way back in the early 2000s in the UAE. I would never have trusted my life in one of those whereas I would have no worries at all in today’s models. Can you spot the errors in this photograph, the reason why I took the photo? The other side is perfect by the way.
Today’s route was especially for Huan with a little bonus for me. It
would be Rendishan but via the ‘back road’ between the first and third turnings
off
Still in the village SWMBO found a bird so I obliged.
There are some small hills as we move behind the main road but as it is so quiet and the scenery is so nice we never really mind them. Here are the ‘ups’.
And here are the ‘downs’.
Our descent took us to the fish farm restaurant and wedding venue.
We both took far too many photos here so let’s show you a few more starting with a chicken going up in the world. Huan wondered if it was following me.
It’s actually quite a beautiful spot, easy to see why couples have their wedding parties here.
Soon we were back on the ‘third road’, the one from Rendishan up to the village. Rooftop gardening is still doing very well. I wonder if snakes ever visit.
Village people work hard in these areas, fast too. This retaining wall you see was not there when we last walked this road, about six or seven weeks ago.
In the village, just before we turned for home, Huan had a happy moment.
On our way back I snapped the workers on the wall, all three of
them. Not unusually for
Right across the road from the working party Huan found another photo for me and then a couple of hundred metres further on yet another.
Let’s finish the day with another spot from one, snapped by me of course. It is another bird. Of the five photos I took only this one was worth keeping. Thank God we are not still using rolls of film! Huan thinks the ‘creature’ on the ground is a grasshopper, I’m not so sure.
Now when we are out on our walks, we sometimes feel a little tired but we never feel that it is too much for us. Today we did another eleven kilometres. However, we do sometimes wonder after lunch if we aren’t perhaps doing a little too much. Both of us could quite happily have stayed in napland for at least another hour!
May 6th Boring day… Well, that was not supposed to be the plan. Shopping was the first order of the day and then I had planned to walk alone this afternoon, give Huan a rest. However, my plans were changed by nature. I thought cicadas only made a noise in the warm sunny parts of the day but they started this morning at about half past five. By six o’clock I knew that sleep would not be an option so dragged myself up early. That meant that by the time we had finished lunch I needed a nap just as much, if not more, than Her Majesty. Change of plans, she can have her solo rest tomorrow and I will have a solo morning walk tomorrow.
There are no photos for today. We did try when we arrived home from our shopping trip but the location of the subject was just too difficult for our phones. Can you guess what the subject was? If I tell you than Huan found it I’m sure you will know exactly what it was.
So, another week is over, a nice
sunny week, summer has officially started on
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