Three Gorges Dam

Thursday, October 17, 2013
 Through the morning, we traveled up the Yangtze River below the Three Gorges Dam. Our boat is the "Century Diamond", designed to be a Yangtze River cruise ship carrying about 260 passengers plus crew. Each room is adequately sized with ensuite bathroom and glass doors out to a private balcony. There are 5 or 6 decks, a big buffet restaurant, an a la carte restaurant and a big bar.

 As we traveled up the river, there were a number of floating docks, villages and walkways up the steep riverbank.

 It's quite mountainous terrain.

 It was a little cool and cloudy but we still managed a photo op on the observation deck.

 We docked below the 3 Gorges Dam and took a bus up to the dam site. The dam is in the background behind Anita. This whole site is unbelievably huge.

Facing the other way from a different vantage point, the 5 stage ship lock is behind us.

 There are always ships passing through the locks. Everything about the 3 Gorges project is on a massive scale. There are numerous turbines for power generation, a 400 sq km (I think) reservoir behind the dam, big locks and a big ship elevator that's still under construction. This project generates a lot of power, facilitates navigation and prevents flooding but it also displaced over a million people who had to move to higher ground and the environmental consequences are still being debated. Anyway, it's very impressive to see.

 After we returned to the boat, it entered the locks. This is a view inside the lock from our balcony. It took several hours through the evening to get through the 5 locks.

We all dressed up for the Captain's Welcome Party. We're missing Ram and Nazeera in this photo but otherwise it's our regular dinner group of Kathy, Mary, Anita, me, Frank and Kevin.
Early in the trip, Frank had left an old coat that he wanted to get rid of in his hotel room. As we got on our bus, the hotel staff rushed out to give it back to him, thinking he had forgotten it. Later he tried to leave it a couple of other places but it was always returned to him and it was hard to explain that he didn't want it. Finally, one morning he left it at the hotel desk and explained that he didn't want it. When Anita saw this, she surreptitiously picked it up, put it in her suitcase and carried it for over a week. Finally, at the welcoming reception, with much difficulty in translation, she convinced the captain to present it to Frank, who had thought it was long gone. Everyone in our group but Frank knew about this all along. Anyway, Frank, although quite surprised, accepted it gracefully. Later that night as we passed through the locks, he stepped out on his balcony and dropped the coat onto the deck of a ship beside us.

As far as we know, the coat is still somewhere in China.