Yangtze River Cruise!
We have just arrived in Shanghai after a nice 4-day cruise on the Yangtze River, the third longest river in the world! The main attraction on the Yangtze is the Three Gorges area, which was quite beautiful. The cruise also acted as a nice segment of our journey from Chengdu to Shanghai.
From Chengdu, we took a 4-hour fast train to Chongqing where we were greeted by a China Highlights tour guide and driver. The guide gave us a nice explanation of the significance of Chongqing in today's China and they dropped us off at the bus station. Unfortunately, being December, the water was too low on the river at Chongqing Port, so a large bus drove us 2 hours to where the boat was docked in Fuling. We boarded at around 10pm and settled into our little cabin on the 4th deck for the night. It was a pretty nice boat, the staff were quite nice, and all of our meals were included.
The first day of the cruise included an excursion to the Abode of Ghosts, across the river from the town of Fengdu. It included numerous temples and statues dedicated to demons and devils, as well as many superstitious testing spots to prove if you were bound for paradise and to test if you were a good or bad person. It was quite amusing following our guide's instructions in passing each test.
On each excursion, we were grouped with the 7 other individual English-speaking passengers on board. 2 were Australian girls, both named Katie. Tracy and Lisa were a couple from Portland. And the other 3 were Swiss, but they mostly kept to themselves. We were also grouped with the Katies and Tracy and Lisa for meals. The other English-speakers on board were in a large group who were all involved in coast guard in developing countries from around the world. There were representatives from many African, South American, and South-east Asian countries. We played crazy eights with the Australians and a few others from the coast guard group each night of the cruise while having a few drinks. We bought beers for cheap offshore in preparation. :)
Our second day is that which brought us past all three of the Three Gorges. The first one at 7:15am was likely the most impressive. Shier cliff faces on each side, rising to mountains barely visible in the clouds beyond. This section lasted for 20 minutes.
The ferry returned us to the cruise boat and then we passed through the western half of the third gorge shortly after sunset. We passed through the 5-stage Three Gorges Dam lift lock between 10pm and 1:30am. We only watched as we went through the first lock before playing some more crazy eights.
We were up early on our third day for the Three Gorges Dam excursion. We were first bused to a viewing platform on the boring side of the dam. Since the dam is still under construction, this was the only way to view the dam at the same level as the top of the dam. Then they took us to a viewing platform at the top of the hill which gave us views of the cool side of the dam as well as the 5-stage lift locks. It's pretty DAM large! Not height, but it is 2km long! Once completed in about a year's time, it will be the largest dam in the world, the water level upstream will have gone up 175m in most places, and it will displace about 1.5 million people! The power of communism... It will produce the energy equivalent to about 18 nuclear power plants. The largest engineering project in China since the Great Wall. Impressive.
Back on the boat, we enjoyed massages and Nicole tried a foot reflexology session. We also learned how to play Mah Jong! Much like rummy, except you use domino-like blocks with Chinese characters on it. Pretty fun. We bought a travel set so that we don't forget how to play. We then enjoyed a complimentary glass of champagne with the crew before dinner and then they hosted a night of entertainment for us. The coast guard group sang We Are The World for us too. Quite fun and we got to know enough people that it was actually sad to say goodbye.
We were up early the next morning to take a 4-hour bus ride to Wuhan. Again, the boat was meant to take us all the way, but the water level was too low. Fog on the highway extended our trip an hour as well because they actually don't allow you past the toll gate when the fog is too bad! We had another China Highlights guide and driver in Wuhan who taught us all we needed to know about Wuhan before dropping us off at the train station. We had 7 hours to wait until our train, but the train station wasn't anywhere convenient and we didn't want to venture into the city with our packs, so we passed the time in the train station. We had a soft sleeper on a super fast train which was very nice. We even had our cabin to ourselves! We also talked with a nice man in the next cabin who knew English well. Jason even talked to his son on his cell phone! Quite fun.
We arrived in Shanghai at 7am this morning and found our hostel with no problems. Shanghai is very modern and actually fairly nice! We think this will be our most "normal" experience while in China. Our hostel seems quite nice too. Looking forward to a nice few days here.
Yangtze River Cruise Pics
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home