Days 58-59, Rest days in Dali: (by Chris)

 

Ancient Dali is a quaint little town popular with western tourists. It has colourful, skilfully painted Chinese style towers and cobbled streets, but what really made it worth cycling 30km out of our way to get here was the fact that it has a bakery that sells REAL bread. Not brioche, not battered dough, not flat breads but real, crusty, lovely bread. They also sold proper cheese - Cheddar, emmental and edam. For lunch i was ecstatic with just bread, butter and cheese and Amy was no less excited with her cheese toasties. We then each had a Mr Wippy from an ice-cream shop. After two months of craving these simple foods, It was exquisite. Recently we have been spoilt in tourist attractions with western guest houses and WIFI. We anticipate we probably won't find any of this again, let alone cheese and ice cream, until Luang Prabang in Laos about 1000km away.

 

What dreams are made of.

Like most rest days, we ate vast quantities of food, lazed around and did a few chores. I had to fix some holes in the tent and cracks in the poles, plus glue patches onto Amy's popped air bed.

On the second day we managed to squeeze in a small trip to see Chinese fishermen using tame cormorants in a symbiotic relationship to catch fish on the huge nearby lake. We were taken out onto the water in a small metal rowing boat by an old Chinese local wearing a straw hat with pink flowers in it. He made an overweight Chinese tourist do all the rowing, despite the fact this man was completely hopeless with two oars.

Once back in town we bought supplies for the days ahead (as much bread and cheese as is humanly possible to fit in and on our trailers). Back into the sticks tomorrow on roads leading us towards tropical forest, elephants and malaria. Looking forward to it.

A good looking bird and the wife: