Day 17. Stone forest

July 06, 2024

We visited Shilin 石林, which means stone forest. I had booked a driver from Ctrip a few days before. Our driver in Lijiang was a smoker. Even though he did not smoke inside the car, I could still smell some. So this time I specified that I wanted a non-smoker driver. The driver was a lady and she had a really nice BYD electric car. She said that for drivers, electric cars gave a higher profit margin.

I bought tickets at the park entrance. There were lots of guides for hire, but I did not feel like we needed them. I relied on the app Baidu Map to navigate inside the park and it worked well. The park had five areas and there were shuttles taking visitors to different areas.

Eternal Mushroom

Most of the crowd went to the Large Stone Forest (大石林) area, so we went to Eternal Mushroom (万年灵芝) , an area that few people went. It was a beautiful hike with nobody else there. I totally enjoyed it.

Large Stone Forest

From Eternal Mushroom, we took the shuttle to Large Stone Forest (大石林). It took a while because most shuttle were full of visitors going from the entrance to Large Stone Forest and did not stop at the Eternal Mushroom stop. Fortunately for us, there was a guide and her two tourists also waiting for the shuttle at the stop. The guide contacted the park and soon we got an empty shuttle to come by. The rock formations at Large Stone Forest were more grand. There were more crowds there, although it was already much better than earlier in the morning. I also got a couple of mosquito bites at some shaded areas under rocks.

Small Stone Forest

We then walked to the Small Stone Forest (小石林) area. The rocks were less concentrated in this area. There were green grassy lawns and lakes. It was really pretty. There were also stands where we bought some ice cream.

Dinner

We had a buffet dinner at the hotel restaurant. It cost only ~$20/person. The food was amazing. There were chef served dishes like lamb chops, foie gras, sushi, and steak. There were self-served drinks such as wine, beer, juice. Self-served food included seafood (clams, crawfish), a small one-person hot pot, all kinds of dessert. There was a person making cotton candy and Claire like that a lot.