Spring Festival Break: Pt 13. The Three Gorges Proper

Our second full day on the boat began with a lie-in as another early morning sightseeing trip took away most of the other passengers leaving us with some peace and relative quiet. Then the real good stuff began. Soon after setting off we entered the first of the famous three gorges - Qutang Gorge. The weather had cleared and, as we stood on the back deck overshadowed by the massive cliffs, we had a great view. It was impressive, even now with tens of metres already flooded and the cliff bases completely submerged.

We moored up in the town on Wushan where we
all transferred onto two smaller boats for our third paid up excursion - a tour of the 'little three gorges'.

By now it was a beautiful day and we soon had the scenery to match. Words don't exist in my vocabulary to describe the little three gorges. Just look at the pictures.

In the shot below, you can just see the tops of trees poking out from flooded farmland. There was a little tourist stop here with a small propaganda exhibition accompanying the usual tourist tat showing the 'villagers' being moved out wearing little more than loincloths to find a 'better life' in one of the new towns. Yeah, right.




























Sailing up the little three gorges we came to a small platform dock where we transfered onto yet smaller barges to tour the 'mini three gorges'. Once a small stream, the flooding has created yet another set of gorges to cruise through, and they just kept getting better and better. Even better was the fight which broke out when someone sat in another man's wife's seat...and among 1st class too...disgraceful. A little worse was the singing that accompanied the whole thing. Even worse still was the commentary that some tour guide was giving throughout the entire trip. We're talking about 4 hours here. Non-stop commentary. On the way out we thought it was
bad enough, but when she carried on talking all the way back too it was just too much. What could she possibly have been saying?! What was there left to say?! Of course it was all in Chinese so we hadn't got a clue, but I don't know if that was a good thing or not. Probably. Either way, we escaped outside by climbing through a window. The attendants had all ushered us inside for some reason but had disappeared in the meantime so we made our escape. It was well timed too. Just afterwards someone upstairs took to the mike and starting singing. Cue an exodus of passengers from the cabin, all climbing out the windows and shutting them firmly behind them
to drown out the awful sound. Take a hint!

In the evening the boat stayed in Wushan and we decided to stretch our legs a bit and go into town. I think I've said something about town squares doubling up as dancefloors and open-air karaoke bars, well, anyway, with the music playing and the food still cooking, Ursula and Julia took to the dancefloor for a little boogie. In no time at all they'd both gained partners and a massive crowd of spectators. When they were finished the crowd gathered round us all to...look, I guess, and after a few photos we made our escape to a nearby bar. Just before we went in some kids came running up to me and Julia and presented us each with a small goldfish! Random.

A loud bar is no place for 2 goldfish in plastic water glasses. It was only a matter of time before one of them got drunk so, not being fans of bars either, the girls went home on a mercy mission to free the fish while we ordered a drink. We should have gone home too. Chinese bars can be iffy places, and this one was decidedly iffy. As we looked around it became apparent that there were whole families inside, including kids from about 3 years old. They were mostly sat around crying or asleep but one or two were living it up on the dancefloor. The whole thing left a bad taste in your mouth though. There's something very wrong about a group of middle-aged men in suits dancing around an 8-year old on a podium. We left quickly.

We decided to take motorbike taxis back down to the boat. It was fun. Mine was driven by a young kid and I had to share with Duncan, one of the Irish guys. When we reached the bottom we all leant to one side to get off, but I guess we all leant a bit far and the whole bike fell over. The kid jumped clear, I stepped off and over it, but Duncan rolled over backwards into the mud. We all found it pretty funny, until we noticed Duncan lying on the ground covered in mud. Then it was bloody hilarious. I love the picture above, you can just see the kid going bright red with hysterics in the background. It was a classic moment.

The next day we set off so early that most of my photos of the next gorges didn't really come out so well. We'd seen the best though already, so no matter. We made a quick stop at another temple or something, but we just got off to walk around while all the Chinese tourists went to a song and dance show. You can see our boat in one of the views above moored to a floating platform. You
can also see a roadway leading down into the water and the tops of two gateposts just poking out. I've seen pictures of how the river used to look before flooding and it is dramatically different now - with a further episode of flooding still to come. The water level will be raised 175m in total. Although I couldn't see it in its original state, at least I got to see a lot that won't be there in another 2 years time.

Sailing on we soon came to the end of our journey - the dam itself. It looks a bit smaller than I'd expected, but it is wide, and the scale of the construction work that has gone on was overwhelming in itself.

This was where my surrogate family split up. The girls had to press on to Wuhan to get a flight early the next morning, while James and I had decided to take a closer look at the dam and then see about accommodation in nearby Yichang. We paid through the nose for the dam tour, and never really got up close to it at all, but it saved the time and effort of trying to return at some other point, so was just about worth it. You can't come this far and not take a look. Unfortunately the tour operators understand this very well...

After all that we were taken on to Yichang, where we had a last-minute change of heart and got the last two seats on a bus out to Wuhan, arriving very late that same night.

The journey so far...
Days: 22 Distance: 5090km