Today was our first full day on the boat. We slept on the cruise ship overnight even though we had not set sail yet. Once Rich woke up, I watched a bit of The Incredible Hulk until the ship was off. The breakfasts here were not too impressive this morning.
After breakfast we got off the boat just east of Yichang to tour the three gorges dam. This dam was started in the early 1990's and will be completed in 2009; after which the landscape East of it will be forever changed. The main purpose of it is to prevent flooding of the Yangtze West of the dam and another benefit of it is the power source. It will be the largest dam in the world. The rising of the river caused 1.1 million people to have to relocate; many of the older generations not liking this idea.
Docking the boat there was a huge frenzy of people trying to sell very crappy products and poorly made junk souvenirs. They horded all of the people on the cruise and were super aggressive. I just smiled and made gestures, but I would not even think of buying this crap they were selling. After we got on the bus, they said to not even acknowledge them. It was a really interesting experience, but tourism is huge on this river, by both Westerners and the Chinese. We got on the bus and met our local guide. She spoke very clear English and was very stylish in her clothing. I took a picture near her at the dam. Driving up to the dam, it was closely guarded by some serious looking army guards to ensure safety of the project. To the right was a huge loch that spanned 5 different compartments. This was more impressive than the dam itself. The dam was not very tall, but very wide. Its height was nothing compared to the Hoover dam. After we took pictures near the dam, we went to another location and Professor Stamps had me whip out the Oakland University flag for a group photo. What I didn't like was that many people had already headed to the bus and we didn't have everyone. I gave those Oakland Alumni the evil eye and joked around a bit.
When we got back, we had a very good lunch and had to spend three hours crossing upstream through the huge loch. They crammed many ships into this loch and as we traversed through, I spent a lot of time on the internet. I spent a lot of time on it because of distractions. I was distracted from people complaining about how slow the internet is, but also I had some very good conversations with Les and Larry who are on the OATS tour. I totally wanted to join up with their group when I heard that they are going to Tibet. I spoke with Larry (who is a retired Lawyer out in Sacramento and who works as a transportation lawyer) about his database that he has created. Les and I had wonderful conversation about my rug purchase and much more things. He cracks a lot of jokes and it was very fun speaking with him. I also was helping other people who were having troubles while I was typing up my journals and figuring out how to crack their systems so I can load up photos. The internet is too slow to send photos online, but we'll see what Xi'an has to offer.
The mid-afternoon had a lot of beautiful and amazing sights to offer. We began sailing through the 1st of the three gorges. The most interesting thing about these lands is the fact that they look relatively infertile and yet there are tons of trees and shrubbery that live everywhere. They probably live off of the minerals in the rocks, but it was pretty crazy seeing how everything grows around here. Every single mountain surrounding the river is at almost a 45 degree angle and yet thousands of people live throughout it. Farming the mountains on very difficult land and fishing in very dirty water. The water is pretty polluted with shoes, wrappers and mud. But regardless is very beautiful. I took a lot of good photos and videos of the gorges.
After the gorges we had a wonderful meal and I drank some wine. By 8 o'clock I was passed out because I was so tired and I slept a total of 10 hours.
