Yangshuo -> Xingping Another overcast day to start in which we went back to revisit the beautiful bike path along the river before getting breakfast. We ended up stopping at coffee shop setup out of trailer next to the path with beautiful views of the river surrounded by the karst formations on both sides of us. At one point the guy jumped on his moped and yeeted out of there, through the bushes lining the path and then sped away down the path. If his moped was powerful enough, I’m pretty sure he would’ve spun his rear tires, spraying gravel behind him but luckily for Daylen it wasn’t very powerful at all. We had no idea why he took off and left the shop unattended until he returned from the other direction with an air fryer to make the waffles many in the group had ordered. Emily, meanwhile, had gone exploring down the path and came back with flower crowns for all of us which we Gorilla taped to our helmets and wore for the entire day. We didn’t have much luck yesterday with the dirt but our first singletrack trail ended up being great. Partway through, we ended up at cave that you could tell a lot of rock climbers had used. In side the cave were also two large concrete tables and blocks to sit on. Each table was easily big enough to fit more than a dozen people. After the cave, my dropper post randomly decided to drop and not lock back into place like it had in Iceland. I had recently serviced it so I don’t know what’s going on with it. The rest of the group had ridden on and after like a minute of attempting to fix it, I was able to get it back into its fully extended position. When I caught up, that part of the trail was very overgrown and rocky. The branches and bushes that I rode past seemed to grab at my jersey. Later I realized there were all the tiny seed pods that looked like mini snow peas stuck to all of us. Mostly they came right off like velcro but on my new socks, they were actually pulling out the threads! 🤬 We tried looking for a place in town to have breakfast but ended up waiting until we got to the next big town. There was a really nice bike path on the way to Baisha where we had breakfast for lunch that all cost the same as one of the coffees we had at the place next to the bike path. After lunch the sun came out and karst formations and hillsides became that much prettier. We had some more navigation problems where there was supposed to be a path but it was just someone’s field. Luckily Emily was able to find a lady that told us how to get to where we wanted to go. The small back roads through that whole section of riding were so nice and the scenery was simply spectacular. All our climbing today was backloaded as we made our way to Xianggong Mountain - the famous horseshoe river bend photo you often see when you search for Yangshuo/Guilin/karst formations in China. Before we got to Xianggong Mountain, we visited this old “Stone City” which was really just a stone building I dubbed Stonestown. It was pretty hot at that point and we snacked in the shade to get ready for the rest of the climbing. We rode through some more scenic small little roads that wound through tiny villages. When we finally got to Xianggong after all the climbing in the heat, sweaty, and changed into our hiking shoes for the hike up the mountain. The guard told us to park our bikes against the wall behind him and we made our way up some very steep and unevenly spaced steps to the overlook. It was breathtaking and I’m so glad we got to see it when it was sunny. Afterward we had a ripping descent to some more dirt. I was enjoying the descent so much (and got distracted by cars coming up on the narrow road) that I missed the turn off and Emily had to come get me. More beautiful views of the formations we saw at the overlook only now we were among them. We did some steep descending that I really wish I had a working dropper post for. We ended up dead-ending again, finding the trail just disappearing again. We made the decision to backtrack and take the road because we were running out of daylight and still needed to catch some ferries not knowing how long they ran for. The ferry crossings were short but necessary as there was no other way to get to our hotel. Once across the river, we were back on a bike path that ran next to it. So. Beautiful. The path was made of tiled stones though so it was a bit rough. Every once in a while there were also stairs. There was one set of stairs that had a thin ramp in the middle of it and I sent it! I made it fine but somehow when Nathan followed he got snagged on a branch. He made it up the ramp but the branch sent him off course so he actually missed the ramp on the other side and went down the stairs and nearly killed himself but he made it down okay. We had to take a second ferry to take us back to the side of the river where our hotel was and by then the sun was setting. We did the final climb after sunset in the dark which I could’ve done without but very glad to finally make it there. The hotel was hidden away and we had to navigate this tiny trail to find it. On the way up, I was wondering if we would need to come back down to find dinner but luckily they had a restaurant. We got showered and had a great meal to end an amazing day.