A successful day visiting Shiboa Shan - a park reserve with 7th Century rock carvings, temples, monkeys and beautiful, forested hills. Many steps were involved in reaching the mountainside temples and I'm not sure I'll be able to do that 5 years from now.
Andy and Jackie were great travelling companions, and our driver handled the hair-pin turns, oncoming traffic, and farmer and farm animals like a professional rally driver. I have many more photos to edit now, although only one of the ancient rock carvings as most are in video-monitored areas where photography of these "national relics" is forbidden. However, we did see a lone carving on a cliff in a non-temple area. Other highpoints of this terrific day were having tea with the staff at one of the temples, getting to know Jackie and Andy, and seeing a 400 year old arched bridge and a relatively unrestored nunnery high up one of the trails (where there were Chinese delphiniums). Hiring the driver for the day (9:30 am - 6 pm) was only 200 CNY and there was admission to the park of 50 CNY.
Right now I'm sitting at Meizi's again, using the internet, listening to the music in the square where adults and children are again dancing. Tomorrow I'll be pulling up stakes again to go to Lijiang, but Shaxi holds a special place in my heart with it's peaceful, relaxing pace and beauty. I can understand how Lily ended up staying here to write her 2nd book.....
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