Another trip!

After climbing the mountains over Lingxi and seeing the beautiful views  we wanted to see some of the scenery around lingxi and Nora (another teacher in the school and Elaine's best friend) offered to show us her home town which we of course accepted.
Elaine picked us up and found Nora and in heavy rains we headed out of the city. As soon as we left lingxi the rain stopped and we heard from Nora's father that it was not raining in her home town.
We drove for around 20 minutes before reaching a road leading straight over a drop into a small river! Elaine backed up and drove a hundred meters futher down to a tiny bridge, we made it over the bridge but just after that there was a narrow gap with a river drop one side and a wall the other that looked exactly a cars width wide. Into this gap someone had dumped a concrete pile obviously to stop cars using this useful cut through! Elaine jumped out and I followed trying to judge if we could make it through. I decided not and managed, with the help of a passer by to dissuade elaine from trying her luck! We needed to find another route.

There was an alternative route, one that snakes through the rice fields on a road barely a cars width wide! We made ok progress until we got to an especially narrow section and three buses were coming the other way! Eventually, with one wheel hanging over the meter drop down to the rice paddy they squeezed past, it was a close thing!
After another 20 minutes we made it and drove out to a massive dam just outside the town, it turned out that Nora's father was the manager of the dam!
We got out to take a look and walked up the face of the dam and as we got to the top a random man with a boat offered to take us for a trip, we accepted and were soon on a boat driving across the centre of the lake. We wound our way up one of the tributaries until the boat could go Jo furher up this steep sided beautiful canyon. We left the boat and he promised to wait for us while we walked.
We walked up next to the stream to a small village, as we approached we noticed even more stares than usual, elaine and Nora spoke with some locals and found out that no foreigners had ever visited this village before!
I took some lovely pictures before heading back towards the waiting boat.
The bamboo and greenery next to the rushing stream was gorgeous in a very Chinese way. The boat back was fine but Chris was starting to feel pretty sick.
We arrived at the car and piled in before going into the centre of town from dinner.

As soon as we got to town Chris felt really bad with a splitting headache and so we abandoned our plan to eat dinner on a hill overlooking the town and Nora called her friend who happened to live nearby and also happened to be a doctor, albeit of traditional medicine!
They bundled Chris inside and eventually took him to a room upstairs to relax and sleep a bit. While he slept I ate downstairs with the doctor and his family in his house come hospital. Dinner was tasty and I mainly just tried to practise a little Chinese and enjoy the tasty food. After dinner the doctor invites me to drink some medicinal with with him, he was 60 or so and I should have known better, what they call wine is 50% alcohol rice whiskey! It would have been rude to refuse so I drank a glass or two with him before checking on Chris.
While I left Chris sorting himself out I had a loom around and it was fine for me to look behind the cabinet at all these boxes along the walls filled with different herbs and extracts that he used in his medecine. I tried to take a picture but in the dark it didn't come out so well!
After that we headed back the way we came and braved the rice field roads at night, luckily the roads were quiet and it all went ok.
Got back and fell straight asleep, with Chris feeling much better after the rest.