Yangshuo - Day 1 Fishing, Bird Style

Today we took an hour bus ride from Guilin to Yangshuo. Still very much in the same region, Yangshuo is incredibly beautiful, known for its Kerst Mountains, rock climbing, and tourism sectors, Yangshuo was a natural stop for us. If only we had gone earlier.
The morning was spent waiting for the bus, the afternoon spent on the bus, and the late afternoon resting. By evening time we were ready to head out again and so we allowed ourselves to be talked into a Cormorant fishing show by the hostel folks. We didn't really know what we were in for.

A short minibus ride into town and we were sitting on a bamboo raft with 6 other foreigners. We met a Vietnamese-American woman from Kentucky who has been teaching English in China for the last 5 years. We had a good chuckle though since her English was quite poor by our standards. As darkness fell our boatman fired up the engine and we headed down river. After a couple of minutes he began to shout into the darkness and a man on a non-motorized bamboo raft floated over. On his raft he had about a half dozen ducks.

Each of the ducks had a string tied around the bottom of its throat to let only the smallest of fish through. The ducks had been trained to keep fishing though, filling their necks with fish that would then be emptied into a basket by the fisherman. We floated down river like this for quite a while, watching the fisherman pull the ducks in with his ore, and the ducks diving back under for more fish.

It was very dark except for a big light on the front of the fisherman's boat. It was hard to get clear pictures but I did my best.

Eventually we beached and the fisherman brought one duck on shore and let us take photos.

I really wasn't keen on wearing his hat but he put it on me anyway.
The duck's claw did dig into Nancy's arm a bit and drew a little bit of blood.
I think this is my favorite photo from the night. I like the shadows and the duck in profile.

Finally, we steamed back up stream and called it a night. We had a cooking class to go to the next day.
I do apologize for the delayed posting. We go, go, go every day and by the time I get home at night I'm so beat I can barely think let alone blog. I hope to catch up in the next couple of days as we have some more travel time.
Thanks for reading!!!