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We left Chongqing on a bus at 4pm heading for Wanzhou, arriving there at 8pm in time to meet the cruise boat. The bus journey consisted of two crazy Chinese movies and lots of people hocking and spitting in the aisles - yes really!!!
We arrived on the boat and found our cabin - not bad, though it did have a squat toilet - great! We went to the information counter to ask some questions but immediately found that having been told that no one would speak English really meant absolutely no English (apart from the sign INFORMATION in perfect English!!). With the help of a very smiley policeman and our sheet of questions written in Chinese that I had asked the hostel worker to write down for me, we managed to get some things sorted! We also found 2 other Westerners that were equally as confused! We managed to order some food from the Chinese menu - getting garlic cabbage and plain rice - Yum! Luckily as we anticipated that this would be the case, we had stocked up on snacks from the supermarket before boarding the boat - at least we wouldn't starve!!!
That night at 11pm
(strange time!) we got off the boat to have a look at the Zhang Fei temple. As the guide only spoke Chinese, we weren't really sure what we were looking at but it was quite pretty! We were woken up at 6am as the boat was going through the first of the Three Gorges - Qutang Gorge. The scenery was spectacular and we had the view to ourselves as everyone else was deciphering the Chinese menu for breakfast!
At 8am we boarded a smaller boat and went through the Lesser Three Gorges (Misty Gorge, Emerald Gorge and Dragon Gate Gorge) on the Daning River. This scenery was even better, though again we didn’t understand the commentary that was blaring out of the loud speakers for the 4 hours!!! We visited Dachang ancient town which had been moved from its original spot due to the flooding created by the newly built Three Gorges Dam. We also went on smaller boats into narrower gorges before heading back to the cruise boat and going through the 2nd (Wu) and 3rd (Xiling) gorges. In the evening, we went to Qu Quan’s House. We don’t have a clue what this was as there were
no English signs but we had to watch a very scary Chinese folk show!! The Chinese people from the boat absolutely loved it - they were whooping and running to the front to get photos - it was crazy!! We don’t think they realized that everyone was miming - even those talking!
The following morning we went to the Jiwan Stream on Dragon Boats. This was really good fun and we climbed up into a Gorge and then watched another show. This show was slightly better but again we had no idea of the storyline!! We then headed back to the cruise boat and carried onto the Three Gorges Dam.
The Three Gorges Dam is a very controversial project. Although it creates enough power to supply electricity to 10% of China's population (the equivalent of 18 nuclear power plants), it has caused thousands of people to have to relocate as their homes will be flooded and it is feared the water will become a stagnant waste area (the world's largest septic tank!). It is also rumoured to have many cracks in it and if it collapsed would flood entire cities. Whilst there we walked from one vantage point
to another to get different perspectives of the dam and the five locks! It is very impressive but not very attractive - we preferred the Hoover Dam!!!
The cruise was better than we had expected, as we had heard horror stories and were concerned about the lack of English, but it turned out to be good fun. We had a good laugh with the other two westerners and got used to the stares and blatant photographing of us by the other people on the boat!
It wasn't until we arrived in Yichang (the end point of the cruise) that we checked our email and found out about the Earthquake that had struck China. We had messages from home asking us if we were safe. We had been at the Dam when it occurred and hadn't felt anything. The Dam is only rated to withstand an earthquake of 7 on the Richter scale so luckily it held despite the earthquake being 7.8! Had we not managed to book the cruise, we were planning to go to Chengdu in Sichuan province to see the pandas so would have been very close to the epicentre.
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