Café came banging on my door early this morning to wake me up to see the gorges. We had arrived at the first one. It was actually just before dawn (as opposed to a good hour or two before). The river was quite misty so we couldn’t see much, but we could see something. It was actually kind of cool, because you couldn’t see what was next. Lots of people all stood out at the front of the boat absolutely freezing to death – the wind was so cold. Boy am I thankful that I brought my new, bright coral windbreaker / raincoat with me! That thing is a godsend.
I stood out front as long as I could stand it and marveled at the fact that the water is already up 135 meters. That is amazing. I can only imagine how awesome the Gorges used to look. It’s a shame really, because even with the water this high, they are still beautiful.
After standing in the wind for over half an hour I was pretty much frozen, and also hungry. Of course the restaurant wasn’t open, so that mean instant noodles for breakfast! Well, yuck to say the least. They were very, very spicy and tasted horrible (horrible for instant noodles even). So, of course that meant it was time to go back to sleep and get warm again.
We arrived at the Three Mini Gorges around noon and transferred to a tourist cruise boat. We are actually lucky that it is low season because we also got to go to the Three Mini Mini Gorges, which only allow 3000 tourists a day to go through. I find it very interesting that there are three of each (Three Gorges, Three Mini-Gorges and Three Mini Mini-Gorges). But first the Mini Gorges – My favourite one was Misty Gorge, which was the second one. It had beautiful tall peaks and interesting rock formations. We then went into Monkey Gorge and Cal actually saw and pointed out some monkeys. There used to be a lot more, but the rising water has displaced the monkeys too. Unfortunately, I wasn’t fast enough with my camera to any pictures of them, but I did get some pics of some goats coming down to the water to drink.
After we went thru Monkey Gorge there was a little stop that had vendors and supposedly a temple (I didn’t bother going to see it). There were grilled quails on a stick (which actually looked really good, but we were told that the meat along the river wasn’t fresh and that we should avoid it). I just got some potatoes that were fried up in a wok and had hot spice on them. They were pretty good.
The Mini Mini Three Gorges were just a little bit upstream from the pit stop. We all piled into little boats, and put on life jackets to go up the stream. These gorges were blocked from the wind and the sun was out and they were very nice. Being in a little boat close to the water made the gorges seem that much taller as well. For some reason though, the “captain” of our boat stood at the front of the boat essentially blocking any and all decent scenery shots. He wouldn’t sit down! It was rather irritating actually because the scenery was so nice and I wanted to get some shots without him in them!
While going through the gorges, there was lots of music. Men were playing horns high up on the rock face, and there was a woman singing on a dock (all traditional music). It was all quite beautiful. That and the aqua green water made a really nice experience. We ended up taking one of the horn players back with us to the embarkation dock. He played on the boat for us as well.
Back on the pleasure cruise boat, we had to listen to an annoying loudspeaker – probably giving tourist info in Chinese, but I couldn’t tell you. Everyone was eating food they had picked up at the pit stop before and putting their garbage everywhere despite the fact that there were garbage cans at the end of every row of seats. We wound our way back thru the Mini Three Gorges to meet our boat again as everyone ate, smoked and rushed to buy stamps at the souvenir booth on the boat.
What I found really sad about China, and I guess I have to say Chinese people, is that they have no consideration for other property or other people. The pleasure cruiser was really nice when we got on, and four hours later, it was completely destroyed. There was garbage everywhere, spit on the floor, cigarette butts everywhere – the whole thing was disgusting. Obviously this is a cultural thing, but how hard is it to not spit your sunflower seed shells all over the seats, let alone the floor. I mean really. I guess they don’t think about the fact that someone has to clean that up later.
After rejoining our boat, we entered Wu Gorge, which is the second of the Three Gorges. I just say in my room and watched it go by my window. My toes were frozen from being outside all morning, so I needed to warm them up. All along the river there were markers indicating how high the water was going to rise. What was really sad was seeing all the quaint, little houses below the final marker – all of them will disappear in the near future.
In addition to the cute houses, there were also orange trees and agriculture. There were also coal pits, with big metal contraptions that funneled coal onto large barges to take down river. The coal itself seemed to be cut right out of the gorge face – basically half of the gorge was black from where the coal was sitting. Very interesting to see.
Back on the boat again, we had dinner with some of the other foreigners on the boat. Eric (from yesterday), Anna (who was one half of a German couple), Sylvia (from yesterday – she is the one from Shanghai) and Kelvin, a Chinese man who had moved to Australia for school. We ordered a ton of food. We didn’t even eat half of it. The whole thing only came to about 100 yuan too. So cheap. (That’s like US$13 to feed 6 people). I can’t get used to leaving all that food on the table. It feels so wrong. I can hear my mother yelling at me about starving children in Africa LOL. It is Chinese custom though to have food left over so you know your guests aren’t hungry. It still seems like a waste to me though!
To see all my photos from this day, visit my photoblog!
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