Water Village and Leaping Tiger Gorge

We wake up early and eat at the Chinese buffet. It is a rushed breakfast because we have a bus tour. We get on a bus and head to Water Village. When we get there Ari put pulls my camera from his backpack and starts taking pictures in the parking lot.

I'm very happy to have my camera back but the battery is almost empty so I won't get many pictures today.

The village is a recreation of a traditional Naxi Village with ancient artifacts and brass lamps that you can light and put in little nooks in the earthen walls. After the village Andrea and the boys go horseback riding while I go hiking along a spring feed tributary of the Yangtze. We start at the spring and work our way all the way to the river.

At the river everyone meets up and most go on a zodiac ride. Andrea and I wait on shore, getting a chance to talk.

For lunch at the tour guide had arranged a traditional Naxi grill but the charcoal grills are so smoky that the group rebels and we go to a traditional Chinese place.

After lunch we head to Leaping Tiger Gorge. The way there wound through valleys so steep it looks like a Norwegian fjord. The sides of the mountains are dark green. Earlier We thought that the landscape looked like Colorado but this was far more verdant and the topography was much more impressive.

The gorge, once we parked, was stunning. We hiked thousands of steps to the bottom, taking pictures along the way with Chinese tourists that all want pictures with actual white people. Li Feng hired two men to carry her and Evan back to the top. I go to the gym regularly, but although I go 5 or 6 times in a week but I haven't had that tough a workout in the last year. Hopefully this altitude and exercise will make Lhasa easier when we get there.

One we're dropped off in Li Jiang it's 6:30 and the adults are hungry so we go to a restaurant called The Vulcan with staff in native dress outside dancing around a fire in a large metal container. Li Feng orders noodles, plain buns, cucumber salary my request because Joshua loved it at lunch), Salmon sashimi (also at our request because Ari and Zachary loved it at the previous night's dinner, but the best part was the two mushroom dishes she ordered. Apparently Yunnan province is the best place to get mushrooms in China and they were this restaurants specialty. Li Feng thought it was an expensive meal because of the mushrooms but dinner for 8 cost 260 RMB (about 39 US dollars).

The streets were really crowded on the way back to the hotel. We ended or way through the crowd, buying street food