China Girl: Day 6: Guizhou Parks, Part 3: Waterfalls

Upon returning to the bus after lunch, we met an unwelcome sight: the hood of the bus was open and the driver was feverishly working away. Our first thought was that we were stranded in the middle of nowhere, a couple of hours from Guiyang. In some ways, it was much worse than an engine problem: the air conditioning wasn't working during the hottest (95+) part of the day. To make matters worse, the windows on the bus were sealed shut. Since the bus was operable, the driver told us to load up, that we were leaving. At first, the driver left the doors open, so we could get some fresh air, but once we really started moving, he closed the doors. All of a sudden, it felt like we were in an oven: super hot with no ventilation. I could feel the sweat poring out of me. People began demanding that the driver open the doors. Finally, he relented and we drove for the next 5 minutes with at least a little bit of ventilation. On such a hot day, it was a little weird to get off the bus and find that the ambient temperature was a relief. A short walk through a garden brought us to the main attraction at this stop: the Huangguoshu Falls (or Orange Falls, in English). At 74 meters tall and 81 meters wide, this is the largest waterfall in Asia. Trails ran along both sides of the canyon to the bottom. Another trail went behind the waterfall. A very long and steep escalator even ran to the bottom. We took a trail that ran along the side of the canyon wall before disappearing behind the falls. Twenty years ago, Dr. Liu spent a summer living in the village above the falls and he told us stories about swimming underneath the falls, before the tourist infrastructure had been developed. Unfortunately, not only is swimming not allowed, but I'm not sure if the water is really clean enough to swim in. After exploring all around the the falls, we returned to the top of the canyon to sit in the shade and enjoy some ice cream, before heading back to the bus/ We returned to a cool, air conditioned bus, which had been repaired by the bus driver while we had been busy sightseeing.

Our final sightseeing stop was at another smaller waterfall, which while also pretty interesting and beautiful, paled in comparison to the Huangguoshu Falls. However, this stop held another attraction for us: peacocks! None of us had ever seen peacocks in the "wild" before, and even though these peacocks were fairly tame, they were free to fly away if they so chose. Naturally, we all had to take tons of pictures of the peacocks, even Dr. Liu.

We finished the day with a 100+ km bus ride back to Guiyang, only stopping twice more for shopping.

Huangguoshu Falls