10/29
Stoned Again.....The Stone Forest
Thursday, October 29

After a diverse breakfast of Western and Chinese dishes at the hotel we piled into the van and headed northeast on the crowded highway. Hundreds of scooters and vehicles hurrying off to work created a busy scene.

As we left the city, small towns and villages surrounded by fields of crops, orchards and nurseries appeared. The ubiquitous motorcycle/cart carrying people, equipment, supplies and farm goods started to be commonly seen on the smaller roads. Rolling hills merged into mountains reminiscent of America's Appalachians. The highway passed through several impressive tunnels and bridges with names like "Long Bridge," aptly describing their characteristics.

After a couple of hours we reached a plateau area with stark gray rock formations, looking like.... a "stone forest."

The Stone Forest
This region had been recognized as unique for hundreds of years, but has recently been established as a geological park and UNESCO site. True to other national parks in China, this has the requisite enormous video screens and piped in music, along with hundreds of enthusiastic, chattering, somewhat pushy, Chinese tourists, including many ladies finely dressed with wobbly high heels and parasols to keep their complexions fair from the sun.

Newly developed, these parks are well planned out with huge parking areas, very efficient systems of "green" trams and buses for moving large numbers of people, visitors centers with plenty of bathrooms and gift shops, and well thought out, accessible trails to the park's features.

In this case, dramatic limestone rock towers jutting out of the earth that were created millions of years ago. Eventually, water carved away most, but not all of these relatively soft rocks leaving the structures we see today.

As in other regions we visited, when the Government establishes these parks, they inevitably push out local people who inhabited the land.

Sometimes the local people stay, continuing their traditional lifestyle - becoming kind of a living museum, of sorts. Other times, these people are resettled, and/or become tour guides and employees of the park.

Duck!
Although still a bit jet lagged, we rose to the occasion and hiked  all day, snapping hundreds of photos of scenery and elusive birds and putting on 4-5 miles.

David, our guide, at the "duck" restaurant

Restaurant doorway

The Dai women are known for their colorful embroidery

We broke up the day with a visit to a fantastic Dai restaurant for lunch. The Dai people inhabit this area of China as well as northern Thailand, and are the tour guides in the park, dressed in traditional colorful garb.


Along with drying ears of corn and red peppers, were slabs of pork and duck carcasses hanging from various rafters around the building. Replicas of farm equipment, baskets of grains and containers of fermented vegetables added interesting sights. However, the roast duck, along with plates of steaming vegetables and soup was the real jewel! Of course, we stuffed ourselves silly!

Another Adventure
A few miles from the Stone Forest on our way back to Kunming our car began to shudder and finally died. After the driver tinkered and couldn't get it running for a while (while we blithely sat inside sorting out our photos) a car pulled up to help. It happened to be a friend of the driver's.

He offered to take us to a nearby town so we all piled in. David then attempted to find us a bus back to the city with no luck. He then hailed down a person who was willing to take us for a fee. Again, we piled in. The young man was quite helpful, but a very fast driver. When his car went over a certain speed the whole car shook. As we raced down steep grades, zipping past the other cars, Kathy and exchanged many worried glances, but we were glad that Edie had fallen asleep through most of the ordeal. Meanwhile, in the front, David kept up jovial chatter with the driver, which somewhat eased our concerns.

The day ended with another delicious meal at a nearby Korean restaurant. Outside on the sidewalk a group of young women were dancing in unison with their parasols to a mix of traditional/electronic Chinese music on their boom box.