Village hopping in Wuyuan.

Having caught the bus from Huangshan to Wuyuan we have spent the last 3 days roaming around the countryside surrounding Wuyuan by motorbike hopping from one village to another.
When we arrived in Wuyuan the original plan was to get a bus to the outlying villages to explore for a couple of days. However we quickly discovered that no buses connected the villages to Wuyuan or to each other. Plan B was to get a taxi, but it appears that no taxis exist in Wuyuan. So having run out of options we were approached by two men with bikes, who offered us their service as both taxi drivers, tour guides and all round travel agents for the cost of 130 yuan per day (around 11 pound 50p). Iniatally we were sceptical about the safety/ practicality of transporting both of us + our massive bags on the back of these ropey looking bikes, however there was no other way, so we hopped on.
Firtsly we drove out to Little likeng a tiny but beautiful village centred around a stream. We stayed in a house/ b and b selected by our new found guides and ate in a small restaurant in town. The locals were very friendly but looked at us like we had landed from some strange planet.
The next day we were collected by our guides again at 8 am. (I should mention at this point that neither our guides nor anyone else in any village we came across spoke english, so communicating for 3 days was done mostly by pointing, acting and grinning like an idiot). They took us to upper and lower Xiaoqi which was a beautiful little village mostly comprising of rice paddies and water buffalo. We then headed on to the riverside village of Wangkou before treating ourselves and our drivers to lunch at the chinese version of a roadside greasy spoon. The food however was delicious until I ventured through the kitchen to the back toilet only to pass the crate full of live fish that we had just eaten half of! Next we visited Si Xi village before finally heading to Big Likeng (over an hour away by bike). Although all of the villages were beautiful and exactly like they had been for the last 900 years (according to the guides) by far the most stunning sights of the trip were the journeys inbetween where the bikes passed waterfalls and huge slow flowing perfectly still rivers and mountains. True to form both myself and Josh continued the trend and declared it the most beautiful place we'd ever seen (just like every place before it), but seriously it was stunning.
In big Likeng the place where we stayed had a roof top verrander with a 360 degree view over the village. The owner offered us tea by leading us to each side in turn and pointing to either a live chicken, a live duck, live fish and finally a vast array of home grown veg. Possibly the most surreal and interactive menu I have ever seen. We settled for chicken and veg and then watched as the chef went out and gathered the necessary ingredients below us. I can assure you the chicken lived a happy and full and entirely free range life before we ate it. And luckily the other 5 chickens didn't mourn it's passing for long and soon went back to roaming the veg patch.
I didn't get much sleep last night as I had terrible nausea (no vomitting) combined with a fever and the shakes all night. Luckily it had passed by sunrise, despite our worst fears that food poisoning was imminent and I'm left to believe it was karma for eating the chicken.
Today we hopped back on the bikes for a couple of hours and visited one last village before coming back to Wuyuan bus station. We are now just waiting for the bus to Shanghai where we plan to stay for 5 days before flying to Guilin.