More Holiday News

We began our journey down the Yangtze from Chongqing. The boat pulled out at 8:30 pm so there wasn't much to see except the lights of other vessels and towns, etc. along the shore. We decided to go up to the top deck and sit a spell. It was quite nice (except for the never-ending cigarette smoke from the men). I managed to stay up wind from it for a while, then had to go inside. (This is a sister ship that looks a lot like ours - we passed in the mist).
I think I took about 250 pics so it is hard to decide which ones to put on the blog.

This is one of some mountain farming along the river. I can't imagine trying to farm on these steep mountainslopes!
One of the first sites we stopped at was the Fengdu Temple.
I have never climbed so many stairs at one time in my life!! After we finally got to the top of the mountain on the right, I told my hubby "Look! all the Chinese people rode the cable car up". Smart huh? Well we rode it back down. Of course we were objects of much staring - many folks had not seen Americans before and we smiled and said "Ni Hao" as our cable car passed theirs.
We were too exhausted to climb back up to the top of the center and left mountain. I did get a pic of the map though.




This is an example of some of the steps from the boat to get to shore to climb up again to see the temples, etc. I believe I counted 320 steps on this one.

Of course, each time we docked to visit another site, there were all sorts of little stands and shops selling anything from jade, to silk, to chicken feet, to noodles, and dumplings.

One morning Jim and I decided to go up on deck early and were able to get a very good view (little did we know that this was the morning we would pass through the gorges).

We were in for some exciting views and activities. After going through the main gorge, there were more side trips (which we had elected not to take). On this day we were transferred to smaller boats to take the trip through the Little Three Gorges.

I will post more pics on the next blog.