Birds, Bile and Bangles

A beautiful morning at the Heqing Wildlife Refuge

11/4
Wednesday, November 4

Uneasy Sleep
I woke up out of a sound sleep to hearing Kathy heaving in the bathroom, where she unfortunately, spent most of the night. A stomach bug hit her like a ton of bricks and cleaned her out from both ends. Coward that I am, I lay in bed hoping I wasn't next, although I did timidly hand her some tissues through the bathroom door. Poor Kathy! The final insult was when she went to take a shower, initially, it wouldn't work. Then it sprayed the whole bathroom, right after she had just cleaned it all up!

Coots, Coots, Coots
We returned to the wildlife refuge the next morning - to make sure we didn't miss any birds the day before. Kathy bravely hung in there, after having almost no sleep form her nocturnal "gastric purge." It was a cool morning, but clear, with incredible mountain reflections in the still waters. There was a huge number of waterfowl (ducks, coots, geese, moorhens, and the like), as well as lots of grebes, egrets and a few cormorants out on the lake. We were quite excited about all the birds we had seen. 
 
I think our enthusiasm even rubbed off on Mr. Wang, who probably thought we were a bit crazy, but gamely looked at our photos anyway.

Beautiful Metalwork
David's next item on our agenda was  a very pretty little town, Xinhua, known for its metalwork. A number of shops there had beautiful copper and silverware, and as we walked through the streets we could see and hear hammering everywhere.

  

A brand new Buddhist temple being constructed

Bridges to shops selling silver and copperware

A glimpse into a courtyard

 A number of the workshops encouraged visitors, so we entered several courtyards to watch as jewelry, pots and other metal items were created. It was good to see many young men carrying out the trade, which has been handed down from generation to generation. Kathy managed to find a beautiful bracelet of a peacock. Overlooking the town square there is very pretty lake, and behind it a very large Buddhist temple is being constructed. I never thought about new temples, I always assumed they were all were old. Duh!!

The hotel we stayed in the previous night, Beautiful, but chilly!

A spring from the nearby mountains runs beneath this restaurant

Washing clothes along the side of the street

 

Field workers planting garlic

 







The road began to climb up into the mountains and become narrow with lots of tight turns. Although there was less traffic, we often got behind a very slow moving truck, or a person on a scooter. 

The scooter - family vehicle

 

Even more slow going were the times we got behind a herd of water buffalo or goats being shepherded along the road. The scenery was quite stunning, though as we continued to go up. We pulled into LiJiang at dinner time, just in time to see the view of the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain from our hotel window.