Goodbye, Expensive Sunshine

As I sit here, writing this post, we are packing up at the last minute to leave Guiyang tonight. We are flying to Guangzhou, where the American consulate is to finalize some of the adoption paperwork for Anna.

Thursday morning, Jay, Micah and I loaded into the bus with Elsie for the two-hour long drive to the Huangguoshu Grand Falls, the largest waterfall in all of Asia. As we drove out of the city, we began to pass between the relatively small, cone-shaped, almost hill-like mountains. They were covered all over with small trees and bushes and every once in a while, we could see the white, chalky rock in the form of a cliff or outcropping. As we moved farther and farther into the country side, the mountains, which Aggie said was an example of karst topography (landscape shaped very distinctively by erosion), became more and more terraced and laced with small little stone walls that curved up and around. Elsie told us that these were old cemeteries built into the sides of the mountain by past generations. On the flat fields that stretched in and around the mountains, grew great green plots of rice in paddies. Small clusters of buildings dotted the fields and a few times we saw workers in their conical hats and with more water buffalo, tending their crops.

We drove further and further up into the countryside and finally arrived at the Huangguoshu national park. We started through the jungle-like terrain down the walkway and towards the main gate. We passed through the Bonsai garden with massive pots on pedestals supporting bonsais of every kind: ginkgo, juniper, mulberry, pine, and others. We passed near a pagoda and a lily pond with choi.



As we began the descent down to where the waterfall viewing platform was, we could already hear the distant roar. Looking in between the trunks of the surrounding trees, we could see the bright stream of white water plunging off the cliff in contrast to the dark green of the undergrowth which grew on the mountains surrounding it. Toward the bottom of the falls, there was a spray coming off the great, deep emerald pool into which the water spewed- a mist thrown into the air by virtue of the pure force of the mighty river. We climbed to the bank of the river for a view from the ground and then climbed up again, over another hill and wound our way around to walk underneath rocks and boulders and into the water curtain cave- a natural viewing spot from behind the waterfall. We all were able to touch the water from behind as streamed off the sheer cliff above us- a very neat experience! With one last view from a rickety wooden bridge (boards missing and all) strung over the rushing river, we climbed aboard the newly installed, massive escalator which brought us to where we had parked.



That night, we brought everyone out across Guiyang's gleaming city centre to eat at Pizza Hut. Anna and Angelle were very glad to be out and about, even if people did continue to stare at us, after having stayed inside the room for literally days on end.



Now we were ready to climb aboard that plane to head to the last stop of the adoption trip, Guangzhou, home of the American consulate. Goodbye, Guiyang! Goodbye, Expensive Sunshine!