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 Yesterday, we met up with friends to show them where we do our fossil hunting. After a nice lunch together at a countryside home/restaurant we headed up the hill with our hammers and brushes! We all managed to find some fossils, but the newcomers got the best of the bunch...
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We went fossil hunting again earlier this week, with the family of one of JD's old school friends. We found about 20 small fossils (trilobites and similar), 2-3 of which were worth displaying. Great fun, as ever. Afterwards, we had a little picnic up the hill - egg rolls, crisps and some fruit.
Finally, a forty minute mountain drive home, past the Bamboo Temple, and it was time for a shower! We got back yesterday from an overnight stay in a village on the outskirts of Kunming. On arrival we headed for the fossils up a nearby hill, somewhere we'd been once before with friends.  Jiajia quickly found a small, but complete trilobite. I later found a large but incomplete one. After a few hours, JD was starting to get frustrated by his lack of luck when he suddenly stumbled across this beautiful, blue-stained trilobite. That cheered him up for the rest of the day! We headed back down to the village with a dozen fossils in various states of completeness. We'd found a traditional, old house online which offered a homestay bedroom. It was very pretty and the hosts couldn't do enough for us. Unfortunately, there were a lot of biting mosquitoes during the night, despite our precautions, which led to little sleep.
The next morning, we went to the weekly market, but it was a bit disappointing - just half a dozen Yi minority women with fruit and vegetables fresh from their fields. Afterwards we found a carpentry workshop which offered craft lessons to children. So JD spent 4 hours making a wooden knife and sheath, with the help or his patient teacher. He loved it and was very proud of his work.  We drove back to Kunming later in the afternoon. We stopped at a car wash as Jiajia has a lot of vouchers for free valets. While they were cleaning the car, we headed for a nearby Pizza Hut as - you guessed it - Jiajia has a lot of vouchers for free pizzas. The benefits of being a VIP customer at the Bank of China!
It was a fun little trip and we think we might go back again someday to explore a little more, in and around the village. Meanwhile, JD has to prepare for his imminent return to school.
Good friends of ours showed us an area on the outskirts of Kunming today where you can, if you are lucky, discover some 500 million year old fossils! We had great fun hammering, tapping and brushing for 3 hours and found about a dozen small fossils. The trilobite below (found by Jiajia) was the pick of the bunch.  |
 AuthorPaul Hider lives and works in Kunming (SW China) and regularly updates this blog about his life there. Past blog entries
September 2023
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