I'm hopeless as a photographer, never thinking that my photos will capture the true magic of a moment, as these feeble attempts prove. I also feel conflicted about why I'm taking them; how many times do any of us go back and look at our photos of memorable places? I bought some postcards that do a much finer job, and besides, my Olympus told me to change the batteries even though I'd just changed them recently, so I gave up and left my camera in the room. Still, on the best day of my trip, the couple that I met and went biking with offered to take my picture from the top of Moon Hill, which we climbed, and I will post that when they send it to me.
Picture your stereotypical Chinese landscape with rice paddies, water buffalo, and wizened old men and women wearing conical straw hats and carrying twin baskets suspended from bamboo poles across their shoulders. The terrain here is "karst," limestone rock that was once at the bottom of a sea. Much of it has been eroded over time, leaving a surreal landscape of spires, pinnacles and caves that look like children's drawings of mountains. After a marvelous day of riding around country roads, I ended with an hour and a half float on a raft made of 10 bamboo poles lashed together, about 10 feet long, sitting in a chair in the middle with my bicycle lying behind me and the boatman standing at the end poling us along the shallow river. The weather was perfect, a relief from the heat of Shekou, and late in the day the sun was setting behind the conical hills. Although the area in general was quite crowded with Chinese and western tourists alike since this week is a national holiday, it was incredibly peaceful on the river.
