Day SEVEN → To Shitai

After a breakfast of two boiled eggs and some rice gruel we went for a ride, objective: find off-road fun! We found a small area where Clegg could drop the bike again, other than that no luck.
When we got back there were three police cars parked in front of the hotel, so as casual as we possibly could with wet washing in our arms we packed up the bike.
By now we really felt a bit sick of the mountains (Mind: The Netherlands are very flat and I like it that way!) and we just wanted to get out.
The road was narrow and Clegg was racing, flying through it and in turn scared the living daylights out of me! After what seemed like an eternity I gave a yelp (as he calls it) and made him slow down (for some reason dashing of the side of a mountain and crashing to his death hadn't occurred to him being a possibility).
Around four o'clock all the dragonflies came out, hundreds flying in battle formation, bouncing off our helmets, forcing us to close every bit of our gear that could be closed... The invasion has begun!!!
We had a break at the shore of the river we'd been following and made a dam (Clegg is not very good at this) with the river stones. A refreshing dip, juice and some tofu later we were back on the road.
Further on the road became broader and better paved, cutting its way through the mountains, forming cliffs searing up from the sides of the tar. Here high speed was exhilarating!
At about 25 km (according to the signs) from Shitai I spotted rubber dingies floating in the river and I shouted “Iwannit! Iwannit! Iwannit!” It turned out to be “wild” river rafting (in a dingy?), it wasn't very wild, but great fun. Peddling the thing in any (wanted?) direction seemed almost impossible...so we mostly swam, much to the surprise of the river faring and shore-bound Chinese especially since I had refused to wear my life vest. Four km downstream, a dingy filled with water, at the end of the dingy route, it turned out that the 80 RMB entrance fee didn't include a ride back up, so we walked (by road a mere 1 km) too cheap and principled to hash up the 10 RMB taxi fee.
After this wet adventure our hungry bellies made us practically fly to Shitai, where we easily found a hotel, good food and a massage.
By now our shitty saddlebags were falling apart, quite literally...