Oct 15-16 - Kaiping and Chunwanzhen

Tuesday... load the bags on the bus... drive to the Macau border... unload bags and carry them through for exit control... reload bags onto bus and drive a bit further to the China side... unload bags and carry them through the Chinese re-entry process... carry them outside to load them on the Chinese support vehicles that are already there with our bikes.

10 o'clock... back on the bikes... start a 125 km stage... later start than usual, so it was along day.


Macau skyline

The challenge leaving big cities is that they are surrounded by other 'small' cities with populations of millions. We basically headed inland west from Macau, flat land, crossed several big rivers which are major transportation routes for raw materials.

house on stilts in a wet area

 

Wednesday... on the bikes at the normal time of 0700. Overcast and misty throughout the day, so cooler than it might have been. Morning is flat and fairly fast, at first on main roads. Then onto secondary roads and some climbs in the afternoon.

Kaiping - riverboat residences

Villages in the afternoon were clearly associated with the lumber industry. In one, there had to be 40 or 50 small shops like this where they were cutting strips of wood and making these flat panels, all appearing to be a standard size. They didn't look like suitable quality to be used as a finished surface. In another village, we saw sheets of veneer being cut and put out to dry, so msybe they come together somewhere else to become a finished product.

 

 

We're getting closer now to today's destination... it's the other side of those hills. Pretty country.

 Good night...