Tag > tour

Jun 16, 2016
China
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甲天下 / Under heaven

 Guilin, Guangxi, China 桂林

As a family, we took a four day trip to Guilin to enjoy its famed scenery, with the help of a driver/guide. Pouring rain every day made the trip rather difficult — despite being rainy season, it’s also China’s peak travel season due to summer vacation — but we were able to make the most of it.

Guilin and its surrounds (including Yangshuo 陽/阳朔 and Xingping 興/兴平, which we also stopped by) are most famous for the karst mountains, and indeed, the city is surrounded by them: they jut straight out of the ground, curve in impossible fashion, and even form natural arches. It’s no wonder they’re so revered that they’re consistently the inspiration to a lot of Chinese art, the style my mom most enjoys painting. And with the consistent rain, what we saw was the misty, mysterious atmosphere that the semi-obscure peaks and Li River lends, one we never would have seen had it been sun and blue skies the whole time.
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Mar 4, 2012
Bolivia
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Beyond nature

Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia

This is one of those things best left to pictures than to descriptions…so I’ll keep it short.

Jess, Sam, Shasha, and I departed Tupiza (altitude 2950 m) at 8 am, for the far southwest circuit to Uyuni.  We had a lovely driver/guide, Carmelo – the most enthusiastic person ever, though he only spoke Spanish.  (Every so often: “YAAAAY!” or “Llamaaaa!” whenever we saw a flock.)  As is required, we traveled in a convoy – two other trucks (four Americans, four Australians), as well as a few trucks (mainly rowdy Israelis) from other tour groups.

Our first day, we visited Quebrada de Palala, an area full of red pointy, needly geological formations; El Sillar, another valley of the moon; Valle del Diablo, an area impassible in winter due to heavy winds and blowing sand (of which we still got plenty, in summer); and the village of San Pablo de Lípez, a village of 150…except we maybe saw three people and a bunch of abandoned-looking houses with broken windows.  Turns out they’re tending to their llama flocks.  Oh yeah, llamas – we saw pleeeeeenty of them.  And ate some llama tamales for lunch too. Continue reading →