Damn Dam
Trip Start
Mar 14, 2006
1
39
374
Trip End
Mar 15, 2007
Yangzi River, China
Saturday, April 22, 2006
Stepping outside to view it I wondered if I should have stayed in bed as the weather had turned even worse with poor visibility and rain forcing everyone to the more sheltered deck at the stern of the boat - that whole foot taller than most thing comes in handy again.
Partly due to the weather and partly due to the fact that there was nothing of interest beyond the Three Gorges Dam, which we would reach later today, I decided I would leave the boat at the dam and continue to Yichang by bus.
The Intrepid group were also leaving today so a few of us swapped e-mail addresses and Suzie gave me a list of useful English sites for when I reached Beijing as well as giving me the necessary Chinese writing to show to get the bus to Yichang and then onto Wuhan. Of course this was simply a polite gesture on Suzie's part as I could get the ticket easily myself using my fluent Mandarin skills - yeah right.
The plan was soon starting to look doubtful though as I was told there was no local buses to take me to Yichang when the boat docked and only extortionately priced tourist buses on tours to the dam which I wanted to see but didn't really care to tour, especially with no English speaking guide.
Getting off the boat and running into nothing but tour guides for the dam I was unsuccessful in tracking down a non-tour bus (I'm sure there was one somewhere though) but did manage to haggle a better rate on the dam tour which would then drop me off at the bus station on the other side to get to Yichang. Also met the 2 Swedes and the guy from Hong Kong on the same tour bus so at least there was someone who was able to translate the Mandarin tour guides waffle.
The dam itself, though large, was smaller than I expected with us all agreeing how we thought it would be taller giving the scope of the project.
It started to rain heavily as we were shuttled from one viewing point to another without yet even setting foot on the dam due to some 'important visitor' - guess they weren't sure which bus I was on.
Before been taking in golf buggies along the dam itself we were told we could only take 4 things onto it including money, phone, keys and camera. We were unable to find a reason for this with no one giving a straight answer but we did come up with a few of our own conspiracy theories and wondered if the allowing of the camera was a critical flaw in their plans.
Unfortunately by this time I was told it was too late to get the last bus to Yichang (despite them promising me to drop me off in time) so we headed to were we would meet the boats that during this time had traveled through the huge locks of the dam.
The boat actually arrived in Yichang at around 10:30pm, far earlier than told or at least earlier than we were told in English so I decided to sleep on till 6am when we would be punted off the boat after been woken by a painful wake up call courtesy of the boat's fog horn.
