China 2013 Day 16

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During the night, the ship has reached the Three Gorges dam and passed through its five locks, a process that took about four hours. It's also a fairly noisy process that disturbed our sleep.

We are up at 6 am because the morning excursion to the dam leaves at 7:45 and we also have to repack for departure. It's a drizzly day and we dress in rainwear and take umbrellas (kindly supplied by the cruise line).

We board a bus that whisks us to the main tourist reception area. We take a series of escalators to a hilltop observation area with a central tower. From there, on a clearer day, we would have a good view of the dam, but today the visibility is poor. We can see the locks that our ship recently passed through on one side, and on the other a new ship elevator that is nearing completion. It will cut the time needed to bypass the dam to 30 minutes, but will only accept fairly small ships, not ones like ours. The dam is just beyond the elevator, but we can't see it. However, in the visitor orientation centre there is a model and lots of background information on the dam project as well as the requisite shops. We snag a couple of t-shirts at a decent price (after bargaining).

By now it's raining quite heavily. There's an electric shuttle to the ship elevator mentioned earlier. Some of us walk there just to stretch our legs. At the elevator, there's another observation tower, but the truth is that we can't see much and we're wet, so enthusiasm is waning. We then board the bus and head back to the ship.

The ship sails. We are now in the third and final gorge, Xiling, which actually spans the area where the dam was built. There is shipboard narration letting us know how awesome the sights are, especially since water levels in this part of the river are not much affected by the advent of the dam, but the weather is now completely socked in and we can barely discern the banks.

We put our main bags outside our rooms and have lunch. Then time for final packing and our group has to say goodbye to the Victoria Jenna. A lovely ship and a great crew, but unfortunately we have been the victim of pretty bad weather throughout the cruise.

The ship is now docked at Yichang. We disembark, and we and all our bags are loaded onto a bus. A local guide named Frank tells us a little bit about Yichang, notably that they have recently set up bungee jumping off the Yangzi cliffs. The road into the city is narrow and shabby, and one's first impression is that this is a small town, but it turns out to be a "small" city of 4 million. It looks cold, grey and uninteresting, although that may not be a fair comment given the terrible state of the weather. The windows in the bus are completely fogged; wiping them off doesn't reveal much because the visibility is so limited. We are facing a 5 1/2-hour train ride to Nanjing on the bullet train that will encompass the supper hour, so we stop at a grocery store to pick up our own supper provisions. Most of us opt for containers of instant noodles, which are so popular among the Chinese. The packaging is exclusively in Chinese, so we have to guess what the packages contain by looking at what's depicted on the containers.

One couple whom we were supposed to drop at the airport for a flight to Shanghai and then home are informed that all flights have been cancelled because of fog, so they have to continue with the tour for now.

We arrive at the Yichang train station, a large building with massive columns on the outside. There after about half-hour wait, we board a bullet train at 3:30. Vi and I have seen these before in Japan, but they are certainly impressive. Their top speed is 300 km/hr.

And we're off! The ride is very smooth and the seats are comfortable. We watch the countryside scroll by. Once away from Yichang, the terrain is fairly flat (as far as we can see, that is) and predominantly agricultural. The farms and villages look simple but prosperous.

Most people sleep or read, but I work on this cursed blog and get up to date. Hopefully there will be an Internet connection in Nanjing. Around 6 pm, we eat our instant noodle supper. Mine is extremely spicy! (Should have paid more attention to the chillies depicted on one corner of the container.)

We arrive in Nanjing about 9:30 pm. The train station here is gigantic, easily the largest I've ever seen. It's the size of a large airport. As we are waiting for our bus to arrive, a young girl pulls on my sleeve to request a picture with me. This has happened so many times now that I'm quite used to it. She ends up getting a picture with the entire group, to her obvious deight. As usual, I make sure she knows that we are from Canada.

No local guide needed here, because this is Jack's home turf; he grew up in nearby Suzhou. Bus to hotel and bed.

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