Day 27 - Drive from Nanning to Changsha

Tuesday, August 21

We drove from Nanning to Guilin, where we stopped to see the Guanyan Caves, a historical place that is in the the Guiness book of world records for having the most ways of viewing a cave...walking, riding a rail car or travelling by boat. I am sorry to say that it was a bit of a disappointment.

We had to make a 1 hour side trip on country roads ( some under construction ) before we arrived at the ticket office to the caves. After figuring out how to get to the cave entrance ( and Nicole sneezing into Jeremy's shirt...which is another story unto itself ) we were escorted into the cave and started to walk through the tunnels by ourselves because our guide abandoned us in order to do something else.

The caves were impressive, however, we were disappointed with the commercialization and the lack of organization. Inside the caves they had set up booths in several locations in order to sell all sorts of jewelry and knick-knacks which, in my opinion, detracted from the beauty of the caves. On the plus side, we did enjoy the boat ride on the river inside these large caves. We were not sure what we had purchased when we bought the tickets and when we were inside, we found out from an attendant that they did not permit us to see the waterfall...oh well!

We exited the elevator for the caves, re-traced our steps back to the car and we were back on the road again. It started to rain shortly afterwards, slow at first followed by the occasional thunderstorm, which lengthened our 7 hour trip to Changsha and we arrived just before midnight. After a quick supper ( yes, more frog ) we called it a night.

Our journey north will continue in the morning, after a good night's sleep.