The Yangtze

OK. We settled in, enjoyed a nice dinner (we were so late arriving that the kitchen and dining room staff had had to wait for us- always a warm welcome when you have crew that already work 14 hour days), had our welcome glass of champagne- all was good. Tomorrow we would (sadly) say goodbye to Shanghai and sail off to see for ourselves the wonder and the woes wrought by the controversial Three Gorges Dam.

Here would be a good time to talk about locks. Never in our lives had either of us ever been, or even seen, a real lock. Which was why, while we were in Paris and not doing the regular Louvre/Orsay/Eiffel Tower thing, we had gone out of our way to experience the St Martin Canal river boat ride, complete with- you guessed it- several locks. What were we thinking? Everyone knows that the Three Gorges Dam…..and also the Volga River…..locks, locks, locks. If we had been able to include Panama in this trip we could have really knocked them dead, but as it were we only had to
chance to traverse, hmm, let’s see:

St Martin: 3 locks
The Volga: 19 locks
The Yangtze: 7 locks

That’s a total of 29 locks. We are now experts in locks and we really don’t need to see any others, so I guess that means we can scratch the Panama Canal off our list….. I dutifully took multiple pictures of the first 7 or 8 locks we passed through and I would be happy to show them to whomever might want to see them. Instead, I printed about 3 to put in the official scrapbook of the trip and that will have to suffice. Still- the technology is pretty amazing and although I still don’t understand why they’re called “locks”, I’m glad we have been introduced.

Back to the cruise. We hit the river with a bang, as the Program Director announced at dinner that our first excursion would be the next morning at 8:30, to the “Viking School”. We had encountered this sort of thing on the Pandaw cruise through the Mekong Delta- the river companies adopt a school or two and then schedule stops there. This is remarkably clever- they take the whole cruise ship there to meet the children and then offer to accept donations. In other words- the riverboat company gets the credit and the passengers foot the bill. Judy and I didn’t go, actually, but we were just about the only ones not to, thereby losing a shot at major footage on the cruise video. Darn. Well, we still have the vodka party from Russia to admire.

After the morning’s bus ride out to the school (actually, people said it was really a heartwarming experience), we pulled up the anchor and sailed the Xiling Gorge. A prelude to the Three Gorges, some of the scenery was beautiful, some not so. Tomorrow: the real thing.