Month: February 2016

We stayed in Asia this week, and visited the Dinosaur Fairyland near Erenhot, Inner Mongolia.

Called the Dinosaur City, Erenhot was once a dinosaur paradise, with swamps, lakes and forests – despite its appearance in the middle of a desert nowadays.

Those who detected some climate change and went looking in a desert for humidity-loving creatures:

• hhgygy
• steve willis
• Lighthouse
• Ann K.
• Phil Ower
• Robin
• donaaronio
• Garfield
• Chris Nason
• Joe9000
• Paul Voestermans
• Eloy Cano
• ashwini agrawal
• RicardPG
• Skip

Some needed a hint:

• Junebug
• Maureen
• Luis Filipe Miguel
• mehmet DURMUS

Did you see the dinosaur? Is that a Gigantoraptor erlianensis?

The Masik ski resort, in southeast North Korea, was built by the North Korean government as part of a drive to “make people not only possess strong physiques and sound mentality, but also enjoy their sports and cultural lives in a worlds advanced condition” (DPRK Ministry of Sport, 2013). Leaders in North Korea hope that it can be used in the 2018 Winter Olympics, being hosted by South Korea.

Construction of the resort was slowed by delays in obtaining a ski lift, partly because the Swiss government blocked the sale of one on the grounds that it was an “installation(s) for infrastructure and equipment for sports facilities with a luxury character.”

In the end, an old ski lift from Austria was supplied by China, who interpreted the rules regarding luxury in a different manner.

Video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eGBwuUubl8A

Found before the hint:

• Lighthouse
• hhgygy
• steve willis
• Garfield
• Chris Nason
• donaaronio
• Phil Ower

And with some help from the hint:

• Ann K.

Not where you’d expect to find a ski resort but built to hopefully serve as a venue for events at a future Olympics.

Inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 1997, Lijiang Old Town is a millennial aged town of incredibly diverse influences. Because the city sits on the “Old Tea Horse Caravan Trail”, it was a meeting place for a vast array of traders from a wide variety of cultures, many of whom contributed to the unique lifestyle and ambiance of the town.

Lijiang is known for its unique water system. Quoting from the brief to the nominating committee at UNESCO: “Lijiang’s remarkable water system stems Tom the 40,000 m* Heilongtan (Black Dragon Pool), which is fed by dozen of springs on the mountainside. Water flows Tom here to the Shuangshi Bridge, where it branches into three tributaries, known as the Eastern, Central, and Western Rivers. These subdivide into a network of channels and culverts to supply every house in the town. This water supply is supplemented by many springs and wells within the town itself.”

Those who avoided searching on the UNESCO site to find it (before the hint) included:

• Eloy Cano
• hhgygy
• Phil Ower
• Jason Hatterman
• steve willis
• mehmet DURMUS
• Garfield
• Lelie
• Lighthouse
• Ann K.
• Joe9000
• RicardPG
• Traxsyder

And those who must really be getting tired of whc.unesco.org by now:

• Junebug

A UNESCO World Heritage Site — yes, there are still a couple we haven’t used yet, and this is one of them.