Headed to the Three Gorges

We were up early again this morning. Not sure why we keep waking up early but I guess our bodies are good with the amount of sleep we are getting. I ended up editing pictures and organizing the room a bit. Then we showered and dressed and were in the dining room for breakfast by 7:30am. We spent about an hour in the dining room visiting and relaxing then returned to our cabin. When we arrive they were cleaning our room so I grabbed my laptop and journal and we went to the lobby to wait for them to finish. While in the lobby I was able to connect to the internet and get some pictures and a blog post uploaded. Thomas ended up returning to the cabin but I decided to stay in the lobby since I had a good connection. After a little time in the lobby the ship stopped. We were getting ready to enter a lock so I went to the cabin and got my camera and Thomas and I went up to Deck 5 and watched as we entered the lock. We ended up staying and watching it fill up and then us exit at the end.

Afterwards, we returned to our cabin and Thomas sat and decided to read for a while. I got my things and went back in to the lobby. The internet works better there.

By going through the locks we were entering the first of three gorges. We are now in the Xiling Gorge. The landscape has changed dramatically and is beautiful with all its hills and greenery. Unfortunately, we are still having overcast skies, with fog and a light drizzle. So our visibility is limited but it is still a bit magical.

At noon we went to the dining room for a little bit of lunch before we headed out for our afternoon excursion. Lunch was just so-so and neither Thomas nor I ate very much. We left the ship around 2:00pm and made our way to the bus for the excursion to the Three Gorges Dam. We had a local guide who joined us on the bus and she told us about the dam as we drove to the entrance and security checkpoint. We stopped at a couple of areas and we learned about how the dam operates and the power it supplies. It is an amazing structure and does an amazing job of helping to control the Yangtze River. We spent around two and a half hours at the dam before returning back to the ship. It was close to 5:00pm when we returned and shortly thereafter the ship left the dock so we could make our way to the dam to begin going through the five stage locks. The process takes about four hours to go from one level to the next. We enter the locks on the Xiling Gorge side and then exit into the Wu Gorge. I spent the time before dinner editing photos and doing a little journaling. There was a cocktail party at 6:00pm but we didn’t feel like going. So we just relaxed in our cabin until dinner.

 Dinner started at 7:00pm and it was not the best dinner we have had. Thomas ended up ordering the beef tenderloin and then I had the chicken. Neither of us ordered from the special menu for the night. We did enjoy the company and had a good time visiting with the people at our table. After dinner we went up to the lounge on Deck 6 and listened to some music and visited some more. We lasted until 11:00pm and then we headed back to the cabin to get some rest. I didn’t have nay energy to work on anything at that time of night so I just went to bed. Tomorrow we have a morning excursion and then we are cruising for the rest of the day.