Aside from beaches and strange cultural parks (e.g. betelnut park) Hainan also has some great tropical nature to explore. Recently, the Chinese government opened up several parks across Hainan making it easy to enjoy some of Hainan’s former volcano glory. The Volcanic Cluster National Geo Park 15 minutes from Hainan is probably one of the nicer attractions Hainan has to offer, where you can venture deep into a dead-volcano.
China Travel has an intro :
Located in Shishan Town in the southwest of Haikou City, 15 kilometers from the downtown area, Leiqiong World Geopark is one of the few dormant volcano group World Geoparks in China and the only tropical island city volcano group World Geopark in China, which boasts great value and significance on scientific research, popularization of science, tourism and sightseeing. Covering an area of 379 square kilometers, Leiqiong World Geopark has been ranked in the list of Hainan’s Excellent Tourist Attraction, Top 10 Scenic Spot in Hainan, the national AAAA Scenic Spot and the national Geopark.
The volcanoes in the Geopark feature large quantity, diversity, complete preservation and typicality, which are rare and precious of this kind at home and abroad. Leiqiong Geopark is known as a natural expo park of quaternary volcanoes. The geological heritage in the park mainly includes the quaternary volcano clusters consisting of 40 volcanoes. It boasts complete volcano types which nearly contains all kinds of volcanoes of basaltic volcanic eruption and steam magma eruption, such as detrital cone, lava cone and mixed cone formed by magmata exhalation and rare and precious large-scale Maar volcano which are completely preserved.
Besides, various volcanic geological landscapes abound in the park, such as the lava stream of multifarious shapes, lava tubes and ecological community. There are over 30 lava tubes with abundant internal landscapes, among which, the longest one is over 2,000 meters. On the volcanic cone, volcanic crater and basalt plateau, there is ecological community containing more than 1,200 varieties of plants. In the Geopark, historic villages, ancient stone buildings, stone pinnacles and various production and living utensils are well preserved, which keeps a record of the cultural context of ancient human and stones, and it’s referred to as the classics of national volcanic culture.
In Ling Volcanic Vent Scenic Area, there are 4 volcanoes which constitute a perfect Holocene dormant volcano group. Entering into the area, you’ll feel as if you were in a basaltic stone world, an outdoor basaltic volcano museum of rich content.
Ma An Ling Volcanic Vent is one of the world’s most complete extinct volcanic vents, on which, you can appreciate the magnificent Qiongzhou Strait. Besides, resulted from the underground magma movement during the volcanic eruption, a marvelous underground karst cave group formed. Near the volcanic vent, there are 72 volcanic karst caves underground. At present, Xianren Cave and Wolong Cave are open to the public.
You enter the park…
Walk up through various small gardens…
And cultural-historical exhibitions…
To reach the volcano. Climb the stairs up…
And you’re on top of the volcano…
With some views of the area.
From this point, you can climb down to the heart of the volcano and see a couple of caves (first photo in this post).
On the way out, there’s a small lake/park…
A cool little getaway from the non-impressive Haikou. If you’re arriving in Haikou, I dare say this is probably one of the most interesting things for you to do.