Huangguoshu

So, today (June 25), I was off to the famous waterfall Huangguoshu, which is located about 140km west of Guiyang. Huangguoshu (Yellow Fruit Tree) is supposedly the largest waterfall in Asia - at least according to the Chinese advertisements for it - so I don't really know if it is true. I'm not certain how they measure it - by height, breadth, water volume, or some combination of those, so I'm sure that they could come up with some measure that makes it the biggest in Asia. That said, it was big - I think it was taller than Niagara Falls, but definitely a much smaller river (Niagara Falls has almost the entire Great Lakes as its basin, whereas Huangguoshu has a much smaller river basin, and is apparently highly dependent on recent rain for water flow).

I got to the bus that goes from Guiyang to Huangguoshu at around 9am - perhaps going to Anshun first would have been a better option, because it took an hour and a half before enough people showed up that they would do the trip. The ticket there was 50 yuan. The bus trip itself took an hour and a half, as it was mostly over a recently constructed freeway (probably funded through China's westward development project).

The ticket to Huangguoshu was just as stunning as the falls itself - 180 yuan. However, there was a student ticket for half off, but it was still a pricey 90 yuan. In addition, you have to take the bus that goes around to actually get to the sights - this is 60 yuan, or 30 yuan with the student discount. Expensive.

There are three main sights - the Doupitang Falls, the Tianxing Bridge, and the Huangguoshu Falls. The best is obviously the main falls. In the last couple of days here in Guizhou, there has been a lot of rain, and as I was taking the bus over, I could see that the rivers had started to overflow their banks - this meant that the falls were going to be especially big. I was not disappointed - the people at the park told me that the water volume was the highest yet this year, and that it was so much that they had to close access to the cave which is directly behind the falls (kind of a bummer that I didn't get to go behind the falls, but it was still pretty stunning). The Doupitang Falls were pretty cool - they are located about a couple kilometers above the main Huangguoshu Falls, and was still fairly pretty. The water was a deep muddy brown - the tour guide said that usually the water is clear, and it was only muddy because of all the rain they had gotten.

The smaller falls

Some more smaller falls - still really beautiful though. The water was just seething everywhere here - notice how the water is overcoming the plants in the middle.

The Tianxing Bridge area was kind of lame - it is a kind of swampy area with lots of strange looking rocks, and a narrow path that you have to follow, and it had lots of large Chinese tourist groups who walked extremely slowly and had to take pictures of every strange rock (again, the Chinese seemed to have named every rock, and try as I might, I could never see what they were supposed to be). So, the Tianxing area took an inordinate amount of time, for something that I thought wasn't that cool.

The main falls - they are really big - it is hard to grasp in this picture, but they are big.

Me in front of the falls.

The swiftly running river down from the falls.

And then it was off to the main Huangguoshu Falls. What can I say - they were big. I'll add pictures when I get back in 6 days. It was pretty cool, and the trip was worth it.
However, the trip back was not as fun. Because the bus wasn't as nice, the return trip was only 40 yuan - and I was lucky because I got to the bus just as it was leaving. So I was pretty happy - I got there at around 3:30pm, and expected to get back to Guiyang by 5.

Like I mentioned, the bus wasn't as nice - this meant that it went much slower than the bus coming. Furthermore, this wasn't a direct bus - meaning it stopped whenever it could to pick up passengers. At one stop, a woman got on the bus, with an about 18 month year old child. The child cried. Nonstop. Normally, I wouldn't mind that - sometimes kids cry, and one day I'll probably be travelling with a crying kid and I hope that people will be patient with me. But the woman's response to the child crying was to yell at her. And naturally, the girl cried even more. To which, the woman yelled even more. Eventually, someone asked the woman if the girl was hungry, and the woman said that she wasn't because she had fed her before she left. After the little girl kept crying and the women kept screaming at the kid for about half an hour longer, someone directly gave the little girl a small snack, and she immediately stopped crying. The girl was hungry! That was it. After that, the mood in the bus was much better.

For about 5 minutes, that is. Shortly after little girl stopped crying, the bus made a horrendous screeching sound, and the engine died. I thought to myself "this bus is toast". We were only about 50km from Guiyang. As if in answer to my fears, the bus driver announced "don't worry - this has happened before - I know how to fix it". Also lucky is that fact that people from the countryside know how to fix machines, and about 5 other people got off the bus claiming that they know how to fix buses. I just stayed on the bus. One of the other passengers asked the ticket lady why they were still driving such a terrible bus, to which the lady responded (to my amusement) "it's actually a miracle that this bus is even running at all - I'm amazed that it took this long to break down." Apparently they have plans to buy a new bus, and are just driving this one into the ground. Great.

Eventually, they did fix the bus, and we got on the road, but I didn't get back to Guiyang until 7pm, after which I took the local city bus to get back to my hotel. What a day!

Really, I should have simply gone directly to Anshun, a large city located about 40km from Huangguoshu, with much better service direct to the falls. Still, a good day!