The Three Gorges Dam

  Yichang, Hubei, China
Thursday, August 7, 2008

One of the sevel locks through the dam

Wednesday August 6th

Alison: We had to have all the luggage outside our rooms before 7.00 which seemed excessively early, so I dragged everyone out of bed by 6.30 and we had a quick breakfast before we went off at 7.00 for our excursion of the world's largest hydroelectric power project, the Three Gorges Dam.

Finally up close to the dam wall

Because of the Olympics the Chinese Government weren't letting us take the cruise boat through the dam, and the security to get in to see the dam area was very tight, but finally we get there and wandered around the huge site.

Tom by the model

Mike is not noted for liking these sort of tours and he and the Icelandic chaps had a fun time sending it up and generally misbehaving, probably capped by him doing a karaoke routine with the mic sitting by the giant model of the dam, but luckily the people took it in good spirit.

We headed back and had an early lunch at 11.00 where we said our sad final farewells to our fabulous table co-diners with whom we'd had so much fun. We also bought a beautiful painting of an old, now drowned village from the Three Gorges, which we had watched being painstakingly done each day outside our corridor, and arranged for it to be posted home.

The painting we bought, almost finished

Farewell to our Icelandic friends

At 12.00 we boarded our bus to Yichang which took about an hour and then got a transfer to the Airport to wait for many hours before our plane to Xian took off. Luckily the Icelandic family were also there waiting for a while so we chatted to them and the boys played together before they boarded their plane and we were left to our own devices.

Finally our plane to Xian left, a tiny little one only holding about 20 passengers, but it got us safely to Xian Airport, from where we caught a taxi to the Sheraton Hotel and had dinner there before collapsing into bed, exhausted.