Happy birthday Eileen/Mum, we hope you have a fantastic day.
We are now nearly 1300km from Shanghai and about 300km (as the crow flies) from where we started our cruise.
This town has its own coal fired power station, the first we have seen.
We forgot to mention in yesterday’s blog that we both managed to put our hands in the Yangtze River. We have now touched the waters of the Murray, Rhine, Danube, Mississippi and Ganges Rivers, some of the greatest rivers of the world.(we must admit, on a couple of those occasions we reached for disinfectant wipes straight after ?).
While talking rivers it is interesting that none of the large boats and barges using the Yangtze create any wake, so the edges of the reservoir are very still with little or no waves hitting the shoreline.
Not long after we woke, the boat pulled in to the town of Shibaozhen. There was a lot of activity down by the water. Lots of women doing their washing, some were beating their clothes with half metre long heavy looking sticks, interesting to watch.
Deb went to the Tai Chi class again this morning and enjoyed it. I decided to give it a miss today, my old body wasnt going to be flexible enough this morning.
We had a tour of the Shibaozhen Pegoda this morning. Well, we left the boat with the tour group but soon left them behind us, seems we really don’t do the big tour group thing very well, we find it difficult walking so slowly and being surrounded by others when taking photos.
It was very hot and extremely humid, so not so pleasant. After a walk up a slope from the wharf area, we walked into town up past a string of tourist stalls, selling all the normal touristy things, t-shirts, fans, hats, etc. We turned left at the top of the hill and walked down another stalled lined street to the entrance to the pegoda area. At the gates there were 2 lines of bronze animal head statues, one for each of the birth year animals. Lots of chinese were picking out their animal for a photo with it.
To get to the pegoda you have to walk across a suspension bridge that is about 200m long. The wooden slats that make up the walkway, undulate under your feet making walking interesting, terrifying for some.
The bottom 9 tiers of the pagoda were built during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and the top 3 tiers in 1956. It was originally constructed against a rocky mountain, but it is now on an island due to the Three Gorges Reservoir.
The walk and climb to the top of the pagoda takes around 200 fairly steep stairs, broken up into 12 narrow stair cases. Many people struggled to get to the top. The views got better and better the higher you climbed until at the top you got 360 degree views over the river and countryside. There were many interesting statues and carvings all through the pagoda. At the top there was a small high arched bridge that seemed to have some significance, all the chinese were walking over it, so over we went :-).
After taking our time exploring the pagoda we made our way back to the boat to cool down, have a shower and get into some dry clothes, so hot and sweaty out there.
Before lunch Deb went for a foot and shoulder massage, and I went to talk/demonstration on painting inside snuff bottles, hands down Deb won!
Our afternoon was full. Firstly we had a tour of the bridge and got an idea of how the boat is guided up the river, how the bridge is staffed on a 3 rotating shift basis, 4 hrs on 8hrs off, with 1st, 2nd & 3rd mates on duty and the Captain on duty 24/7 and most of the control systems have a backup as a failsafe.
After that we went to a Mahjong lesson, and had a practice game. It was fun, we have wanted to learn to play for ages. We might look into playing when we get home, we thought it was similar to rummy.
At dinner tonight 5 from our group had birthdays while onboard so the ship’s guests sang happy birthday to them all and we had cake for desert.
It’s a passengers talent show tonight, but maybe more on that tomorrow. Tonight is our last night on the Yangtze River, its been interesting, we have enjoyed it.
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