The Three Gorgeous Gorges

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Breakfast at 8 and the day begins.Actually we have already been on the balcony for a while.The Brit across from us is thrilled with the discovery of toast and we have a good laugh about his culinary find in this land of such delights.Ann settles in for what is later described as her bets manicure ever and i chat on deck with a couple from denmark.The river slips by and ships come and go.We enter the first gorge at about 10 and thoough it is a short one only 8 kms in length it is spectacular with towering peaks and sheer cliffs dropping down to the great river.Lots of pictures are taken and we all agree this is great. The next gorge is much longer,about 45 kms and we are comfortable settled on the foredeck watching in awe,I am on my secong memory card and have over 700 pictures so far so you should all get lots of sleep before we return as I will be inflicting my images on you all.
The lunch time draws us off the deck and another wonderful meal is presented.We have eaten lotus done in many waya,eggplant,fried apple rings,duck,chicken,pork,seafood,fish sliced and displayed similar to the sunset, or whatever it was, fish we had in Beijing,Whunan pizza and always soup and fruit.
In the afternoon we dock and disembark to a smaller vessel to go a tributary of the river.More spectacular scenery and at the end a small community all turned out to meet us,Actually they al turned out to sell us souvenirs as they had a line of stalls we had to pass before getting into sanpans where we were taked further up the now shallower river by the power of 6 men.The sanpans are gondola soze holding about 16 people and these men rowed and at times dragged us up stream. Quite a sight and a bit awkward to see these men drag us up harnessed to bamboo ropes.These are not big men but strong with defined muscles in their legs straining to move us as they walked along the rocky shore line.Regardless of our sensibilities we are assured they are happy to make a living dowing what has been done for many many generations.We tip as we disembark and head back to our ship. There are mysterious caves along the cliff walls with coffins in them,apparently ancient and origin shrouded in mystery
We get back and share a beer on deck with an American rock climber and chat along the way before sitting down to an 18 course farewell banquet. It seemed like just yesterday that we sat down to the welcome banquet.....it was.
After dinner we wait the entrance to the locks bypassing the Three Gorges dam.We approach in darkness and as we get closer the sight of the first step of the 5 step lock is awesome.Huge locks,one for shipping going downstrean one for upstream vessels.We go in first inching to the end and then wait as 6 other vesseld insc in with us.There are no distances between us and the walls and the other ships but when all are in place the great steel doors close and we drop about 10 meters.Actually we went into the second step first and the first one will only be used when the river floods to its full height in 2009.The same process is repeated for each step but after a couple we head to bed as Ann and I are disembarking at 6:30 for our onward trip to Nanjing.

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