Personally I awoke very sick and searched out
the Ship Doctor, Dr. Wu who gave me some antibiotics and cough medicine and
sent me back to bed for the rest of the morning. Norma, not really
wanting to stay on board with me, took the camera with her and set out with
most on board to take a trip up the Daning River, a tributary to the North
of the Yangtze, aboard a small Motor Sampan.
After climbing the steps necessary to reach the
bus, there was a bus ride of about 1/2 hour to reach the landing on the
Daning River where we boarded a small boat that just held 30 of us.
We set sail up stream to the north and the first thing we noticed was that
the water in the Daning is crystal clear and very fast moving as it is
coming down out of the mountains.
As we headed up stream, we saw some very
beautiful farm land on both sides of the narrow stream. In some
places the river was so shallow that we actually hit bottom in some of the
rapids. There were two young men on the bow with large strong
poles who constantly were pushing the bow around so as to keep us off of
the rocks.
We saw ladies washing clothes on the rocks
along the river and also children playing along the banks. There were
farmers in the fields and in some areas the farmers had brought their crops
down to the waters edge to be picked up by small boats and brought down
stream to Wusan for sale or further transport on the Yangtze to larger
markets.
After several miles we entered the first of the
Lesser Gorges the "Misty Gorge" which was extremely narrow which emphasized
the steepness of the canyon sides of the Gorge. Misty Gorge was well
named as we could feel a fine mist while passing through it.
Misty Gorge continued into other Gorges an we
were able to go another couple of miles before we had to turn around
because the stream was getting to shallow to safely take the boat load of
people any further up stream.
Coming back down stream was a little faster
than going up stream and we arrived back at the landing in time to get back
on the bus and rejoin the Victoria II before noon.
That afternoon around 2 pm we entered the last
of the Three Gorges of the Yangtze River, the QUTANG GORGE which is also
the shortest of the three at only 8 km long which only takes about 40
minutes to clear normally. It took us longer due to the amount of
traffic in the Gorge and the delays we had awaiting clearance to proceed at
the entrance and at several of the curves. The Victoria II is one of
the larges ships on the river and the river pilots were very careful about
allowing us to proceed in the narrow gorge with it's fast moving currents.
After clearing the Qutang Gorge about 3:00 pm
there were such ships activities as Mahjong lessons, Dr. Wu's "Tai
Chi", and a lecture about the famous WWII Flying Tigers which headquartered
in Chongquing during WW II to defend the Burma Road.
I stayed in bed most of the day and began to
feel as little better as the day went on and was able to go to dinner in
the Dynasty Dining Room that evening.