Australia, Kakadu National Park rock art - Part 2 , Nourlangie

I preferred the Nourlangie location in term of art, though in terms of place to camp and explore Ubirr to me was best.

The rock art there photographed better too.

This one below is dated to be from 1964...so not that old.

The simple filled in shapes like the kangaroo below are much older.

Australia, Kakadu National Park rock art - Part1 , Ubirr

I keep on posting about China because I took so many photos and I had such a great time but since I have been to Australia. I am now in Canada and I am just back from just under two weeks of hiking in Jasper National Park.

But first Kakadu National Park in North Western Australia, a fabulous place rich in Aboriginal art...and I will only really show the rock art.

Ubirr is probably the most famous of all the locations in Kakadu. I spent quite a bit of time at the Ubirr campsite hiking around and enjoying the place. I loved Kakadu.

I should say that the rock art is hard to photograph well and the photos do not do them justice. In place the various paintings below are not that hard to see but there is a lot of painting on top of paintings and in the photos it makes it hard.

This is a closer shot of the area shown in the first photo and it shows better what you can actually see.

All of Ubirr is a large area under a rock overhang and all that you see in rusty red in this photos is an art gallery.

Mostly in Ubirr you see animals...but not only

This is a Tasmanian tiger (now long extinct but seen alive in Tasmania within "white people" memory) this strongly suggests that they use to exist on the mainland of Australia too. In fact it is believed that the were pushed to extinction on the mainland by the dingos (brought by the Aborigines) who took their niche.

A lot of fish painting at Ubirr, they are mostly barramundi a local fish still very much fished in the Alligator River in Kakadu. Notice the hand on the left.

China - the fish of Bei Hai Park, Beijing

Just for fun here are the photos of a mass of Chinese gold fish who somehow know that food can be had on the other side of the moat....Don't ask me how they knew.

I am just posting the photos in the order I took them.

This is what I first noticed: a column of fish swimming around the corner of the moat around a temple.

And this is where they were going.

It seems that it would never end and they kept on swimming around that corner.

There was more fish.

And even more.

 Finally it came to an end and the entire rest of the moat was totally empty of fish.

China - Pingle an old town not so "touristed" up - Part 2

I also wandered away from the two main streets all done up for the tourists and had a great day.

I stumbled into a courtyard thinking I was following a small street. A gentleman pointed out to me the way back to the tourist part but I just ask if it was OK for me to go into the yard and in a typical very friendly Chinese way he said I could just go ahead.

I love the detail of the architecture: how a typical "fancy" Chinese rook line is done with normal plain roof tiles!

Then eventually since I had some spare time I started walking away from town along the small dirt roads traveling among farms.

This field below is tea, just a very small field so it must be for local consumption. I also saw an old woman in town drying tea leaves for her own household but I didn't take a picture. Sometimes taking a picture ruins the moment.

China - Pingle an old town all "touristed" up - Part 1

Tourism in China (for Chinese) is very big and some places are all done up for visitors. Pingle, which I went to visit for a day by bus from Chengdu, is one of those but was still quite interesting.

Pingle is built along a river.

You can rent small barge like floating platforms where people typically go as a group and drink tea and play mahjong.

 Lovely little things. I was there before the tourist seasons so things were quite but apparently in the heigth of summer the all place is booming and and those are floating about.

 Listed in the BBC travel section (I only noticed afterward) as one of the greatest place to have tea is "any place along the river in Pingle".

Through all this life of the locals goes on.

 Street food as usual was great.

It really was a nice small town.

China, Train Trip - Part 2, The Views

After hours of small villages, mountains and a very gravelly river it was dark and when I woke up the next morning all was different:

The trip was great. I hope to go back to China and if I do I will try to do more train trip. The girl who when with us to Xi'an had told me that the train trip from Chengdu to Beijing was not worth it and that you could see nothing on it but I am very pleased that I did it. To me the "all bunch of nothing" was really nice and very much worth it.