We departed the hotel at the LongJi rice terraces with a 10 minute walk to a roadhead. On the way we passed various gourmet delicacies such as “100 year old eggs” and fresh snails.

From the road-head 4WD vehicles conveyed us bumpily down to the valley to the large car park to await the shuttle buses. It was evident that some celebrations had been going on, as the car park was deep with residue of fireworks. Locals were sweeping the mess together, and every so often there would be an explosion as an unexploded firework finally got the hint.

We also found a catydid insect. Very pretty.

The shuttle-bus rattled us down to the entrance gates were we resumed our journey on our own tour bus.

The route took us south via Guilin, where we coordinated with a taxi that had carried our lost bag from the airport.  And then on towards Huixiang to check in at our hotel for the night. As usual we got the 3rd floor – I was hoping for views, but all we got for the effort of lugging our baggage up 3 flights (lifts are uncommon here) was the wall of the adjacent building. Baggage deposited we headed for lunch.

As usual the food was heavily garlic contaminated, and the “meat”  might not pass muster in Australia. I stuck with rice and omelet.

After lunch we headed on to Huixian glass paddies. The ‘roads’ here are narrow. At one point close to our destination, the bus could not make a turn from a bridge to the road round the hill because there were large rocks piled up at the edge. A bit of diligent rock moving, and a lot of backing and forwarding and eventually the bus got past without even a cm to spare. Round the other side we climbed part way up one of the precipitous rock peaks by scrambling up a rough path to get an overlook with fine views of the flooded fields/fish farms below. We photographed there for an hour or so and then headed down. The bus had to share the track with farm workers, vehicles and drying rice, so we did not get through quickly. By the time we returned to our room with no view it was dark, and we were off at 4AM for our next sunrise photography session so the lack of view was not a great trauma.

I made a gallery of more photos at https://photos.app.goo.gl/ZeFpaogMS57Srgom7.