Karst, crevasses and the stunning stone forest

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Kunming, our current location, sits at around 6000 feet and after so many concrete jungles we were thrilled to see mountains, trees and greenery everywhere outside the city. It is also notable for having the first truly blue skies (ahem, read smog free) we’ve come across so far on this trip. Makes me miss my clear, blue skies back home.

Our principle reason for coming to Kunming was to visit the Stone Forest, an enormous area (about 400 sq km) dominated by karst formations that can stretch up to 40 metres high. There is a 12 km sq park that is accessible to tourists and I’m fairly certain that every single one of them visiting Kunming showed up at the SF at same time we did. There is a main path that runs through the park that will pass you by the main sites or, for those with a bold constitution, a bunch of small maze-like side paths filled with nooks and crannies that are almost completely tourist free. T, having a keen sense for the appropriate time to split from the rest of the group in favour of endeavours of an exploratory nature, made the call for us to head off into the nooks as soon as she set her eyes on the throng of tourists, lined 10 deep, on the main route. T, me and T’s mama dove in (after receiving strict instructions to be at a pre-set meeting point at a specified time) while the rest of our group continued along the main route with the guide. T’s mama had read in our guide book about “Pea Pod Pond”, a must see site in the SF, and having seen a sign for it coming in, we set out trying to find it.

Now, T and I have hiked trails in a decent number of national parks, so we’ve got a respectable amount of experience wandering aboot a moderately groomed natural environment and as a result, as you can well imagine, we quickly got ourselves completely and unequivocally lost. And hells it didn’t take long…I believe it went something like, left, left, crawl through hole, squeeze through crevasse, walk down steps, you are now lost. There are set paths though the forest, but the maps that are posted have only a bunch of undecipherable squiggles, a dot indicating which squiggle you are on and the two other nearest rock formations. This doesn’t help if you don’t know which rock formation might potentially get you out (and we did not). Plus, we often took a path because it seemed like more fun than the one next to it (for example, we opted to go towards “jail cell” rock instead of “woman standing next to husband“ formation). Probably not the best way to get yourself found. Plus we were still trying to find pea pod pond (we had loads of time before the rendezvous and figured we could still get that in if we could ever figure out where we were).

Like every excellent national park, SF also had “s.o.s.” telephone boxes sprinkled throughout, so, we figured they might know whether we’re supposed to turn left or right at the end of “very deep ravine”. Our Mandarin, still being embarrassingly poor despite our consistently trying to use it, didn’t get us very far as I’m not quite sure the employees manning the s.o.s. line where expecting us to just want directions, so we hung up and moved on. There may still be a rescue helicopter hovering over rescue point #32.

Eventually we came across a hut (like an actual Gilligan’s island looking hut) that had two park police officers stationed and verbal communication failing us once again, T’s mama jumped in and began artfully pantomiming “pea pod pond” in the hopes that that would set us off in the right direction. Alas, her efforts were fruitless, so we carried on with the sounds of two park police officers giggling like school girls in our wake.

Ah, but the gods did smile upon us - we came across a sign that pointed us towards the main route and after mere moments we found ourselves back amongst the civilized world. Hmm, but we still had some time before our scheduled rendezvous…would it be a good idea to head back in and find our pond? Of course it was! Ahem, this may be the appropriate point to mention that we also weren’t entirely sure where our meeting point was, so we had to find that too.

We had to hustle to get back to the original entry point, but found our rendezvous spot on the way and vowed to follow the signs carefully this time. Only problem - no signs anywhere for pea pod pond, but, now wait a minute - we spot one for…oh, I see how this happened now…it’s actually called “Sword Peak Pond”. Hmf. This kind of makes sense now (and also makes me wish I could have seen that acted out). So we follow the signs and finally set our eyes on the green splendour that is SPP. But wait, what is that we see? An enticing nook? A tempting cranny? Where could that lead? There is about a two second delay to do the quick math to calculate how long it will take us to get back to the rendezvous point and check my watch to see how much “getting lost again” time we might have to play with, and back into the fray we go. Well worth it this time as the path led us around the back of SPP for some spectacular views in relatively short order allowing us to make it back out with a few minutes to spare. Magellan has nothing on us.

So what have we learned? Maybe next time bring a map or get the name of what you’re looking for correct or learn to ask “do I t turn right or left?” in Mandarin.

I’m thinking probably the map.

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Photos

Blue skies over Kunming
...and trees to boot!

Going back up
frrom very deep ravine

looking up
from inside the Stone Forest

Love the sign
Inside the Stone Forest

Local costume
This province has 50 of China's 56 ethnic minorities

Comments

[E-Dog]

LOST??
HAHAHA... NOw you guys know how I felt being lost in the Tokyo subway system with no one understanding my querries! lol Mom told me this was her favorite adventure: wandering through the Stone forest... As LL COOL-Lynne would say: " It's amaaaaaazing" :) LOVE the cute local chinese costume! I hope you guys have EVERY local costume and attire you came upon! zài jiàn & y+ lù shùn fng ( goodbye and have a nice trip)

[Big Daddy]

Look up Dragon's Tooth
The "looking up" photo is called "Dragon's Tooth". I know that because I was with the guide who told us that and the names of many other obscure rock formations. When you get back, check the rest of photo's for turtles, mothers, elephants to name a few. You can even name some yourself, after so many, who will be abe to argue?