When we got up this morning, the ship was cruising through the beautiful Wu Gorge and Goddess Peak. This made for a very pleasant breakfast when we watched this scenery from our sixth floor dining table.
After breakfast everyone on the ship boarded a ferry boat to cruise through the Lesser Three Gorges. Jan, our English speaking guide took us out to the side deck, so that we would could hear him. He said the woman speaking Chinese over the loud speaker inside the ferry would be talking loudly inside the ferry the whole time. He was right!
Lesser Three Gorges
Jan used to live in a smaller city that got flooded by the Three Gorges Project. He is sad not only for losing his home, but for losing the beautiful small river where they would go white water rafting. The government gave everyone money to buy one of the new apartments. When one was purchased, though, the price included only the basic shell, not things like windows, electric wiring, and kitchen appliances. He had to hire plumbers and other workmen to make his home livable.
Soon we got on a smaller boat operated by two local boatmen to go through the Mini Three Gorges. This was an extra trip that we had purchased. The river here was a lot narrower, and the rock formations were very beautiful.
The Three Gorges project was very political when it was planned and built. The government didn’t spend the extra money to make sure that the fish could continue swimming downstream. Now there are hardly any fish left. The water is not clear any more, but it is now green. It is sad that people throw trash in the river. The water is about 250-300 feet deep. At that location, it was 1/8 of the distance to the top of the mountain. Jan feels sad to have lost all of that natural beauty.
We came back to the ship for lunch, then we watched the beautiful scenery as the ship cruised along the Yangtze. At 3:30 we went on our last optional tour. We had a cute little guide who spoke very good English. She didn’t hurry us along as we climbed 360 stairs to get up to White Emperor City. It was my least favorite tour from the ship, but our guide was good. At the end of the tour, she asked me to fill out an evaluation form for her. I wrote down all the positive things about her, then I put an A+ at the end. She was very happy with the evaluation!
Rich person’s coffin up high in cave
We had a relaxing dinner this evening. I am really happy to be eating all of our meals in the quiet VIP dining room.
Yangtze Sunset
10,294 steps, 4.38 miles