Jiubujiang National Park

So, today Joan and I decided to visit some of the local landmarks. Trip one: the bus station. I walked to the counter and asked for 2 tickets to Jiu Bu Jiang, a town about an hour from Youxian. A Youxianian (if that is what they are called) recommended the place to us. She said there was a huge lake and natural caves, etc. The ticket woman said a bunch of things which I didn’t understand, but amounted to go outside and catch the bus across the street. Somehow we actually managed to find the rickety little bus she spoke of and match up the characters. And we were off, Joan watching Firefly as I was engrossed in reading Pride and Prejudice. Oh, Darcy how I love thy. Trip 2: When we got to Jiu Bu Jiang I asked for the lake and was subsequently directed down the road. Well, apparently we are the only two people stupid enough to walk to the lake because it was about a 2 mile trek uphill. But alas, we arrived. It was absolutely breathtaking (see my pictures on Picasa). We approached a group of Chinese and asked (in broken Chinese) how much it cost for a boat tour. 80 Yuan (about 15 dollars) for a 2 hour tour on the river. For some crazy reason, we assumed there was a scheduled time that the boat departed, but as I am quickly learning schedules are simply inexistent in China. Joan and I took a romantic, private tour of the lake for 2 hours. When we returned to the dock we asked how to get to the waterfall and natural bridge. I’m still not sure what they told us, but we just kept emphasizing that we did not want to walk. After 10 minutes, we decided to give up and take our chances walking. Luck for us, they saw our distress and a man was kind enough to offer us a ride on his motorcycle. Trip 3: Now, apparently foreigners simply do not visit this town. As we crawled onto his motorcycle his friends started flashing their camera phones and treating us like we were famous. When we got back into town the man pulled over and ushered us into a small (and quite shady) shop. He then paid for a photographer to take his picture with us! And thus, our day ended.
Tomorrow another adventure when Joan and I head to the metropolis of Changsha to buy bootlegged dvds, real milk and enjoy a meal at Pizza Hut.