Day 9 - Dimen 58 kms - Staying with the Dongs !

The 3.30 a.m. firecrackers helped those of us tired of sleeping to wake up and sit around aimlessly while also serving well to mask the sound of the nearby heavy  rain.

Our mornings highlights included cycling through slush, muddy potholes, traffic and heavy rain as we escaped our overnight town of Rongiang and our delightfully pleasant air conditioned hotel !
We were soaked by the time we put on our rain jackets and even wetter in sweat with them on as we climbed steeply for 8 kms to our morning coffee stop

Coffee over and our hill finally summited, our route then descended before taking us over a long series of undulations that appeared to cross half of China !
Jacquie was back on the bike while Marysia appeared to have nearly recovered fully from her bug and both were riding strongly.

Our delayed lunch stop though had us on zero energy and just about falling off our bikes !
Kev's sugar fix solution was to buy out the nearby moon cake stall much to the delight of its owner while Viv & Linton miscommunicated in buying a similar pastry asking for 8 and instead getting 800 grammes or about 30 pieces !

Lunch done we took a very steep off road track for 3 kms made seriously difficult by having to cycle and carry 5-10 kg backpacks full of our overnight gear as our accommodation in the historic Dong village of Dimen was inaccessible to motor traffic following the repair of its only road.
In fact a portion of the roads concrete surface had only just been being laid down meaning we had to lift and carry our bikes with the risk of falling and being permanently immortilised in the setting concrete !
Entering the 600 year old Dong village we were surprisingly jumped on by a group of camera wielding Chinese apparently doing work for National Geographic

Andrew and Viv were both interviewed (Viv at least didnt need makeup) while our  group were photographed holding up a National Geo banner - i hope it was not a political statement !

We crashed into our traditional dong style accommodation guest house washed off the days accumulation of mud and and set about looking around this delightful village pretending to ignore a pig being slaughtered and a skinned dog being cooked !

A genuinely all round tough day !