Three Gorges Dam Site, Xiling Gorge

I had a terrible nights sleep last night, turns out the lounge bar is right above our room and although Kemm was snoring like a trooper, I was kept awake by footsteps sounding like elephants above us!

Ho hum, such is life. On with the day - breakfast first then we headed out on our shore excursion to visit the Three Gorges Dam project - quite simply jaw-dropping! The enormity of this project involving building the actual dam, relocating about 3 million people into new cities and building the ginormous lock system for shipping traffic - as said, it's all amazing and needs to be seen to be believed.

3 hours later and we are back on board for lunch – fortunately the fog has lifted to allow river traffic again so we are off! The afternoon is spent cruising up through the gorge system - fabulous deep gorges all now part of the river system which has buried numerous villages under water. On and on through the gorges – the Yangtze is the 4th largest river in the world after the Nil, Amazon and Mississippi and this gorge system which now has a huge dam, is preparing for another 4 dams or enormous size – it’s absolutely mind-boggling that the Chinese can just decide – okay, let’s build this, and it happens! In any other western country there would be 5 years of feasibility studies first!

Our mooring for the evening is in the relocated city of Wuchan about 100 miles up the Yangtze River (we think!). Anyway it’s dusk as we arrive and tie up to the dock – not a dock any of us are getting off at though – just dinner and evening entertainment on board tonight. The entertainment is a ‘Fashion” display of Chinese fashion and culture through the dynasties – the show is put on by all boat staff who obviously must be part of the entertainment each night as well as their regular on board duties. The “Fashion’ show is great anyway – the fabrics and the poise of the Chinese people is amazing. I headed down to bed before the end of the show as I had not slept well the night before and having been coughing my heart out for a couple of days, things were starting to catch up on me. Kemm of course, had a few drinks at the bar with a couple of the guys in our group – then got our daily bar bill for the whole day before leaving!!! Not to be discussed!