On the Lijiang River in Guilim, China

Guilin, China has one of the wonders of the world with its mountainous scenery all along the Li River  The river travels 483 kilometers  like a jade ribbon winding among thousands of grotesque peaks with spectacular landscape and elegant hills. It is the inspiration of many famous poems and art work in modern and ancient times relating to the beauty along the Li River.  

It was a puzzlement to us as to how these peculiar mountains were formed. They don't look like any mountains we have encountered before. The mystery was solved during this trip. The geography of this entire region is a massive honeycomb of gigantic caves. Prehistorically, the tops of the mountains you see was level ground and over ions of time thousands of caverns collapsed, hence the resulting steep, vertical mountain sides. Apparently the mountains are continuing to gain height because of continuous erosion still taking place.

We are holding a 20 yuan bill on which is printed the same stretch of Guilin mountain range that we are standing in front of in this photo.

This mountain has been given a name: Elephant Mountain. Can you see the elephant?

Alan and Lita Saltzman and family
We were pleasantly surprised when our awesome insurance agent and his family from Colorado joined us for this leg of our southwest China tour. They were so much fun and son, Ethan, speaks fluent Chinese since he is studying in China this school year.

We rode in a large sight-seeing river boat along the Lijang River. But the local folks make a nice living taking Chinese tourists up and down this scenic waterway in smaller motorized flatboats.

 To view other Guilin mountain photos go to http://www.liriver.com.cn/site/en/index.asp.

This enterprising fellow charges 5 yuan for a photo with he and his well-trained cormorants.

I've seen bamboo before but never like this. This is a handsome stand of towering bamboo, one of thousands all along this river valley.

We got to see fishermen engage in the ancient art of night fishing with cormorants. The men tie a string around the birds neck and its leg is tethered to a long leash. The lanterns attract fish and the cormorant dives in the water to catch the surfacing fish. The bird is brought back on the boat struggling to swallow the fish of which the tail is dangling out of its mouth; and the fisherman squeezes the fish out of the cormorants throat into a basket. I'd like to meet the inventive fellow who figured out that method of fishing.

After our river trip we saw more natural beauty of the valley travelling in this cute caravan of yellow buggies.