We all arrived in Lijiang in time to go out for lunch. We walked off down the road for lunch at some nice place that Alim chose for us.  After another traditional style lunch for this area, we headed off to visit the old city of the Naxi People who are one of the native people of the area.

We had only being walking a couple of minutes when the heavens opened up on us. In a city without awnings over the side walk the only option was to buy $2.00 umbrellas. I think the rain is a regular event at catching out tourists and locals, as umbrellas are readily available on the street. In Dali the previous day as soon at it started to rain, a woman appeared on the street with a basket of them to sell !!!

The old city is very commercial these days as it is visited by 5,000,000 Chinese tourists every year. The whole afternoon involved a fair bit of walking and some more navigational errors; but we arrived back to the hotel – so all is well.

The drive to Lijiang for Maurie and I was interesting, as our GPS took us a country road instead of the freeway the others used. On the country drive it answered a question for me. For the last few days we had been driving past acres of Tobacco plantations and as an old tobacco farmer I wondered what drying process was used in China? Yesterday I discovered that it was air-dried in sheds. We also drove past Mulberry bush plantation for the growing of mulberry leaves to feed silkworms for the silk factories…..along with changing a flat tyre in the mud in the middle of the road works.

Today we are off to Tiger Leaping Gorge.

Today has been a rest day in Dali; for the cars anyway as I have walked about 10 kilometres around town and to the 9th century Pagodas, so the tracker today is me walking not driving. We are back on the road tomorrow.

Even with the weather a bit inclement all day, the morning was spent walking around the main part of town discovering all the back alleys; and weren’t some of them interesting. I walked down a street with lots of little factory’s making cotton doonas then turned the corner into the local market where people come to sell what they have produced or what is their speciality like the different collection of chillies, vegetables, live fish and all different meat… and the list goes on.. all best seen in the photos with this post.

The afternoon four of us walked to the three Pagodas and back with our guide Alim. As the three of us walked faster then Alim we walked a little bit further then necessary due to navigation errors on my part. As much as I hate to admit it!

Yesterday we left Shilin at about 9.00 after going to look at the Stone Forest, but deciding not to enter as we had seen some of the formations from the outside and all had more interest in going to the Dinosaur museum later in the day on the way to Dali.

In regards to the Dinosaur museum, I must give a very big thanks to Ross Oakman who read about this museum in the Australian Geographic in January and built it into the trip plan.

When we entered the park it looked more worn out theme parky then anything else; but low and behold after walking around the track we came to this 9000 square metre building on the side of the hill. When we went inside it was the most incredible dinosaur display I’ve ever seen in my travels. It contained not one or two dinosaurs, but about 50 complete dinosaur skeletons all mounted and all made from real fossil bones found on the site. There were complete animals still in the the rock that they died on.

Further in the hall were groups of 5 to 10 dinosaurs all different sizes of the same species all of which had been found at the dig site. Then the bigger highlight was down the one side of the building was the side of the hill with all the bones still exposed in the siltstone for you to see how they were found.

Like one of our group said; “Seeing it like this makes it so real.” which I think summed up the visit completely.

The days driving was all freeway for the 430 kilometres. Yesterdays drive nearly had me getting a coat out with the temperature starting to fall as we are now at 2000 metres. All though it was freeway all the way it was still 5.30pm when we arrived at the hotel in the old city of Dali to say in a hotel that is over 100 years old with all the old Chinese wood work.

Yesterday morning we left the old town of Yuangyang to climb up to the ancient region of Yuangyang 1400 metres higher in the mountains. This is the area that the native people of the region, the Hani people have lived for centuries. The highlight of this area were the vast areas of rice terraces that are still in use after being built 1300 years ago. The rice terraces are still being worked in the old style using water buffalo for cultivation, and like all the rice we have seen in China it is hand harvested. The local Hani women are still wearing their national dresses everyday.

After looking around the area and all having a Cuppa tea beside our cars it was time to head back down the mountain and off to the Shilin Stone Forest.

Maurie’s and my departure was delayed for twenty mins to put a bolt in the starter motor. This is a common problem with CAV starters and was no real concern; just an inconvenience.

We stopped for lunch in Yuangyang at a street market for a buffet lunch..a hot one :-).

The rest of the day’s drive was a couple hundred of kilometres of mostly freeway driving. Freeways are not as nice as the country roads, but an essential part of Chinese driving if you want to get anywhere. As soon as you leave a freeway the average speed of travel drops down to about 30 or 40kph, so the days get very long as some of us have found.