About 30 minutes drive west of Zhanjiang we visited the Huguangyan Scenic Area (That’s a mouthful). It surrounds Maar Lake, which was created when a volcano erupted and collapsed a mountain, which created the lake, with no river connections. Now it’s a part of the Leiqiong UNESCO Global Geopark.
We arrived and bought tickets, in which case this time they needed our passports; it’s not always clear when you will need to show your passport (so you bring it everywhere), and when you watch the ticket agent take pictures of your passport with her phone you get a little nervous, then realize, who even looks like me to match the name on it, and go on.
A huge (fake) turtle is there to greet you at the entrance, and Chinese New Year is still in effect, so there was also a temporary gate and dragon to walk under as well to enter the park.
We walked down the road a bit, looking for the lake, when we saw it on the other side of a bunch of steps going down, and not up, thankfully.
We walked to the edge of Maar Lake, and could see many Koi looking for snacks. We also eyed a line of mini-golf carts with animal themes. We were inspecting them when a young lady fellow tourist came up and helped direct us to a rental agent. We paid the initial fee of 200 Yuan (about $25 USD) for 2 hours. They led us to our yellow cat car, showed us the simple electric controls, and we were off to circle the lake.
We alternated driving, stopping at some of the scenic spots with the colorful and bright bougainvilleas and other flowers,
…a Buddhist temple, many cool statues (the fat Buddha is unique to Chinese Buddhism we learned. The lady on top of the bull, and we learned her story, that Jessica is standing in front of in the bottom picture);
…and other relics of a park that had clearly seen better days, and were in disrepair, but that seemed to be a recurring theme, though a bit odd to us, as the park had plenty of visitors.
After our fun times riding around in our kitty mini golf cart, we dropped it off, almost exactly two hours later, and went to a nearby “deer park,” which we do not recommend at all in any case. Then we tried to walk around the nearby Guangdong Ocean University, which was a closed campus we were told, so we headed back to the hotel. Dinner consisted of a seafood boil packed with many things/creatures we could not identify, but ate most of it, and then had crazy dreams/nightmares, so I’ll chalk that up to an experience I am fine to not have again.
Another sunny day (we had seven days total in Zhanjiang, and even a local told us, “that is too long,” and we concurred by the end), so we booked an all day tour, with the end goal being the Lighthouse at the “South Pole”, the southernmost point in mainland China.
It was just Jessica and I when tour driver (Zhitang) picked us up, he warmed up to us as we drove and listened to Chinese music; we have been in many taxis/DiDi’s and I ask them to play music (we’ve only heard rare samples of some American songs), and it’s cool to listen as it runs a gambit of different musical styles, same as ours, but almost exclusively sung in Chinese.
Our first stop was the Pineapple Fields, where we saw rows and rows of pineapples planted in red soil, with fellow tourists also taking pictures;
There were many pineapple selling stands, and our driver took us to one stand where we snacked on the freshest pineapple pieces, and later we bought a bag of dried pineapple slices, which were so good too (and can be re-hydrated in a glass of water). As we walked a kind, fellow tourist even gave us a mini-pineapple, which we later had the hotel cut up for us; it was so good.
Then we headed to the west coast, and drove along the long road, stopping at a couple places, and had our best meal of our time in Zhanjiang in a roadside spot. We bought iced coffees before reaching the “South Pole” of China. We first saw the lighthouse, and Zhitang told us about the history of this area, which was important as a battleground during the French invasion. There were many tourists from all over China, taking pictures and walking along the beach front.
We stopped at the China post office, as people will often send postcards from the South Pole. We asked Zhitang to take our photo, and took one last look at the lighthouse before heading on (we saw so many tourists throwing up peace signs and hearts we had to do the same).
Our final stop was a quick one, at the ancient (but still in use) salt pans, which was how people first collected salt from the sea. As you can see, the salt slowly separates from the water.
We were spent, and took the few hour drive back to Zhanjiang in relative quiet, with a couple days left to enjoy.
Phil's WayPastCool 