Yangshuo Day 2

The view from here =)

I will upload more photos SOON! But this is just a sneak peak so you can see how beautiful this place is!

Never have I ever been to a butterfly garden, had a mud bath, gone caving, hiked up a moon shaped mountain. Oh wait- Yes I have! I just did that yesterday! Day two in Yangshuo was even more amazing than day one. Theresa and I started our day off with my first real breakfast since arriving to China, complete with french toast and OJ! We then took a taxi to the bus station in town where we proceeded to then take a bus to Butterfly Spring Park. We had researched the park prior to coming to Yangshuo and we knew this was a place we would want to see considering there was supposed to be a butterfly garden with (no lie) 100's of thousands of butterflies. The website said the butterflies would fly around you while you walked through their garden of wonderland like a freaking fairytale dream come true. Well, the website was a tad off base because when we entered the garden I think we saw a total of maybe five butterflies. Thanks again China. We had to walk through a cave to come out at the other end of the mountain where we encountered a pretty terrifying bridge. It was seriously a bridge out of a movie... you know the ones where someone begins to cross just fine all while laughing at their partner and then suddenly a board breaks and the troupe runs across as fast as possible while the wooden beams are falling into a black abyss? Yep... that kind of bridge. (Again, I am sorry that I will not be putting pictures up for a while since I am not on my computer and the internet here is so horrible that it takes hours to load photos.) Thankfully Theresa and I both made it to the other end of the death bridge and then proceeded to hike a buttload of stairs (as usual since China doesn't believe in walking on dirt or grass) up to a pretty lookout on the mountain. We headed back down in search of the butterflies and we passed a pretty waterfall and a few shops. We did eventually find the butterfly garden and you already know how I feel about that...


When we were done with the five butterflies we took a motorbike to Moon Hill. Again we were prepared for a hike, we were not prepared to be greeted by three gillion stairs. I was weezing and panting the whole time as we hiked alongside our tour guides up to the top of the mountain. The mountain has a huge hole in the middle (note- Moon Hill) and I was so ecstatic to reach the moon so I could finally have a rest. After regaining my lung power, I explored the area a little bit with T and we snapped a few pretty photos (sorry, again, no evidence of this). The view from the top was amazing. Pretty much this town is breathtakingly gorgeous and I cannot even believe it exists.

After Moon Hill we took a bus to Moon Water Cave where we were in for a few more stairs and a whole lot of fun. We hiked, climbed, wadded, and crawled through the cave. Our tour guide stated, "Watch your head," more times than I could count. With our hard hats in tow we made it all the way through the tunnels and into a glorious pool of mud. Theresa and I both covered ourselves from head to toe in thick, gooey, sticky, brown mud and laughed and floated and even slid through the pool. I am still picking mud out of my scalp and ears... To "wash off," and I use that phrase loosely, we bathed in the hot springs for a few minutes. Seriously, we have been missing out on all of the beautiful things this world has to offer.

We made it back to our hostel with plenty of time for dinner (fried dumplings and sweet and sour chicken) and a round of Scrabble. We sat on the terrace for a few minutes and enjoyed the silence and fresh air and then went back to the restaurant for dessert (toffee apple thing and apple crumble with ice cream). We read one of last year's issues of Time Magazine and got pretty excited when reading The Best Inventions of the Year. For real, people invent the coolest things. It was then off to our room and to bed.

Day three has been just amazing as the other days and I can't wait to share about it later!

Here's a teaser of what's to come-

Mandarin lesson:
Shuǐniú 水牛 (Water buffalo)