October 20, 2011 - Yangtze

This was our final day on the river.  The tour of the day was supposedly the Three Gorges Dam project.  In fact, it was a far away view of the locks that allow ship traffic to drop the 110m that they have created with the dam .  They did provide some facts...22 GW of hydro that is currently about 10% of the generation mix with coal being about 70% of the mix.  Their ambition is to reach 30% hydro in the coming years and to augment with wind and solar.  Today the dam project serves about 3% of the State's requirements.  When we were in Beijing, Mr. Stone told us that in some local areas they have planned power outages every day for half and hour to an hour to provide power to Beijing.  That said, there was transmission EVERYWHERE!

After the tour it was back to the boat and the final pack.  We sailed a bit further into the very small port at Yi Ching where we were met by our guide, Susan.  She got us to the airport and enabled lunch at the airport restaurant. It was one of the most delicious meals we've had.  Cheri had pork and hot peppers with rice.  John had chicken and mushrooms with a mushroom soup that was very tasty!  Our plane was 40 minutes delayed so we chatted with our friends from the curies who were also transiting to Shanghi. We landed, got our luggage, met Jimmy our Guide and asked if we could see an acrobat show.  Of course!  They literally dropped us at the door at 7:30 and the show had just begun!!  WOW! amazing!  Love it!

Spinning plates, bodies in impossible positions, motorcycles flying in a small metal cage, men balancing each other with one hand!  We both loved the acrobat show and agreed we'd see another one the next time we are in China.

We spent the night at the Bund Hotel. They were out of non smoking rooms, so our guide forced them to give s a suite!  Very nice!  Just wish we had more time there!  We did order a shrimp fried rice for dinner and it was tasty.