August 12, 2006
The next morning we drove a couple of hours to the “Stone Forest”. It is so picturesque that you wanted to take photos at every turn. This 400 sq kilometer area is made of limestone structures that were underwater about 270 million years ago and over time rose and eroded into some pretty neat shapes. There were thousands of people and thousands of steps (most of them slippery as per Chinese tradition) and thousands of opportunities to take photos.
We had a typical lunch at a nearby tourist restaurant with lots of different things to try, beef, duck, a green vegetable that tasted like mustard greens, fried goat cheese (which was great!) and a soup that had a very pale melon looking vegetable in it.
After living here more than 4 months, I thought I had become jaded to the Chinese driving practices. Nope - and remember that ignoring lanes, honking, and passing with minimal distance or visibility is the norm. Even I was shocked when on our ride back our driver passed a car that was passing a truck with a bus approaching. I was thankful that it was the last day with that driver, for the rest of the trip we lucked out and had a great driver called Mr. Mao.
On the way back through the countryside we were fascinated by how much of the land is utilized for farming. Since they do all their farming by hand they can and do cultivate every inch of hill and mountain. This manual labor intensive type of farming would never be profitable in the US.
