Day 52 Yuanyang & Around

At age 60 which she looks every day of, the owner is quite the character. She is a mother figure to all who stay there. I was told off twice, made tea the wrong way and found a jar of coffee I apparently shouldn't have. With not a word of english both times she made me sit down and she would make & bring the drink over to me.
Run by her and her partner the hotel was a basic but popular stay in the rice terraces.
After breakfast of French toast, an egg & jam pancakes our taxi driver arrived to take us, Ming & Youyou around the best viewing sites of the rice terraces. Luck on our side again the best time of year to view them is while they are full of water Dec-Mar with planting in march so we hit the best time of year!
The driver took us to a few free sites,there are purpose built viewing areas but there is a cost for each we wanted to avoid.
We took what we hoped were amazing images of the terraces and the local people walking them in their traditional dress.
The driver, Ming & Youyou were absolutely invaluable to us especially when it came to eating, they brought us in to a small town where we sat down in the restaurant and Ming spoke with the owner/chef arranging a great meal(see pic).
These are small villages and high (1500-2000mts up) in the mountains food is all very local in this case before the 'Toilet' out back was a cow, chickens and a couple of workers washing veges.
After lunch we were taken to a few more sites on the way to tigers mouth a massive area of terraces with a viewing platform high above best for sunset reflections in the pools. We spent a couple of hours there because we needed to secure a spot to take photos at sunset when people line every available rail space.
Some cloud is needed to get the best reflections from the pools and we had very little but hopefully we got some nice shots, we took enough!
The drive back to our village was about 40min to our hotel where we had dinner which included a dish with chicken feet. I knew Rachel hadn't noticed when she went in for seconds somehow she missed the whole claw sitting on the plate!