This morning we had an early flight to Kunming to see another one of the highlights of our trip. From the airport we met our local guide ‘Richard’, jumped in a car and headed for the Stone Forest.

The Stone Forest is essentially an under water mountain range that’s not under water anymore. It’s over 270 million years old and consists of huge fairy tale looking rocks. It’s brilliant wandering around through the winding rocks jutting out of the ground. Our guide took us expertly around avoiding all the crowds, it’s a mind blowing and magical place. In the centre there is a high rise platform to climb so you can over look the bulk of the ‘forest’, which was amazing and the seem to go on forever into the distance.

We left the Stone Forest and made our way to a place outside Kunming called Mile, to our hotel for the next couple of nights. Our hotel is actually a natural hot spring resort with loads of pools to use. Glad of the rest we decided to take a dip tomorrow and relax in our room tonight, tomorrow is a free day so we can enjoy the hot springs then.

Wow the hot springs are hot, aptly named indeed, some of the ones right at the top are like getting into a hot bath. We wondered around today investigating the complex. Apparently very few westerners visit this resort, it’s mostly used by the Chinese, which explains why we had so much trouble trying to get a cup of tea! We ended up with a Coke, which is close I suppose.

We decided to try out the pools and had a really relaxing time bobbing around and plunging between the hot, cold and milky water.
Tomorrow we’re exploring the rice fields at sunset, it’s going to be wonderful.