OK, today is the day I should finally get up to date.
We had a great nights sleep, although breakfast finishes at 0830 so we have to be up a little earlier than we would have liked. The morning was spent reading, resting and exploring the ship. We met up with our “table mates” at breakfast, a German couple, an Australian couple, an English Couple and an English doctor on his own.
Below are a few shots along the river, unfortunately the visibility is fairly poor. I am not sure whether it is pollution or, as my old met. teacher (Bert Marsden, for you Brits who may remember him from the BBC) used to call it “Anticyclonic Gloom”
Anticyclonic Gloom
Human Power at Work
Motor Power at Work
Boat to Ferry Passengers to Shore
In the afternoon we arrived at Shibaozhai and took a walking trip ashore to visit a 12 story pagoda. To get there we had to negotiate 100’s of street vendors, bur they weren’t too pushy.
The original village was lost after the building of the 3 Gorges dam when the water level rose about 90m, so a new one was built by the Government.
Village Gate
To get to Shibaozhai you had to negotiate the Drunken Bridge (as named by the locals). The bridge consists of 2×6 planks placed over 4 steel cables. It is far from stable with many people walking across it!! In the winter when the level of the Yangtze rises, the water is only a few inches under the planking.
The Drunken Bridge
To Protect the Pagoda from the waters, a dam was built around it, which also serves as a walkway from the bridge.
The Dam
Carvings in the Wall
Without the dam the winter water level would come to about 3/4 of the way up the door
The Pagoda
Above are statues in the Pagoda, and yes we did make it to the top. It was a breeze after Tibet!!
On the way back to the boat we found a couple of ornaments that we wanted to buy, as we were looking the stall owner showed us the price on her calculator. 180 yen each. We figured 200 yen for two was a good place to start the “game”. She came back with 125 each. This seemed in the ball park that we thought was reasonable, so we decided to buy them. Unfortunately our combined resources were only 135 yen so we had to walk away and leave them. After two steps the stall owner shouted “OK, OK” and sold us both for 135!!!! Working on the theory she was still making a profit, that was one h*ll of a markup!
In the evening the ships crew put on a fashion show of Chinese clothing through out the ages.
The pictures aren’t the best as they were taken from some distance without flash.
Finally I am up to date with the blog!!!