Big travel day, from end of river cruise to limestone karst mountains. A long way.

We rode on the fast bullet train again.

This was the part of the trip that Clare was looking forward to. We learned about these fascinating geomorphic features during a lecture at UCLA during graduate school.

The city of Yangshuo was opened for tourism before other areas in China, and shows influences from western cultures,

The style of women’s formal wear was quite different from what we had previously seen, showing strong influence from India and represented the Tang dynasty.

We tasted local foods at dinner together at Lucy’s, a restaurant frequented by tourists including Intrepid groups. Many left their marks on the walls.

Today, we hopped onto a bus to go up and up to see “the most beautiful cave in China”. Many other tour busses were also present.

We walked over a tributary to the Yangtze River to get to the cave.

Snowy Cave is 1644 meters long and has six scenic caverns. Ever since its discovery, it has aroused great interest among the speleologists and some other well-known scientists home and abroad. It was voted as “The most beautiful cave in China” by the Chinese National Geography Society.

Puzzled, we approached a caged area over our path to the cave. Monkeys! They fed monkeys gourds around the people cage, to enable tourists to get great pictures of the monkeys. Many monkeys were carrying their young.

A few in our group were given canes to help us negotiate the steep slippery steps. We were also told we could turn back if it seemed too much.

This cave tour was the fastest we had ever been on. Explanations disregarded scientific ideas for whimsical stories. Being a slow walker who likes to look around a lot, Clare was often pushed from behind by other tour groups.

Signs before we entered the cave indicated that both calcite and gypsum speleothems were present, but no gypsum was pointed out to us.

We can’t help but take a ton of pictures of these beautiful geological formations.

When we exited the cave, we gave back our borrowed canes and followed the path back to the bus.

Our last night on the cruise ship, our group went overboard with wine and laughter. We all got quite silly, especially Sharron, Anna, and Julia!

When we arrived at Chongqing we were no longer on a still reservoir but a strong flowing Yangtze River.

Our cruise ship had this map on the first level. It must date from cruises before the three gorges dam was built. Our cruise begins in Yichang and ends in Chongqing.

Our (big) boat trip on the reservoir behind Three Gorges Dam was beautiful! Paleozoic sedimentary rocks on all sides, some slightly folded. After sailing some at night, we woke up in the second of the main gorges.

The boat sailed smoothly, just like river cruise ships in Europe. We could only tell we were moving by watching the scenery go by. Which was why we were there, of course.

After breakfast, our whole group switched to a smaller (medium) boat in Wushan to sail up a tributary to the Lesser Three Gorges.

A guide pointed out different peaks or other features, saying their names, “because it looks like” something. We didn’t listen too much to these stories. Misty Gorge was named such because it is often misty, though (see map below).

Brian and Clare took the optional small boat trip to view the Mini Three Gorges.

The cave-like formations were often hollow, making us wonder about how they formed.

We were talking, like we always do, about the rocks, how old they are, etc. so the tour guide wanted to take our picture with a special sign.

We loved smoothly sailing close to rock cliffs before going back to our group on the medium boat.

In the narrow Mini Gorges, the water depth was 30-40 meters; before the dam was built, these small tributaries had less than a meter of water.

We went back to the big boat and kept going upstream (west).

Three Gorges Dam. Not only does it hold back more water than any other dam, it also has a boat lift (elevator, not lock). Brian and Clare wanted to see both, surprising Peter, our guide, because no previous client of his had ever wanted to do the lift before. So, he came along with us and Julia.

A guide explained that regular locks are used for larger ships to go past the dam: 3-4 hours. Smaller vessels (less than 3000 tons) use the lift: 40 minutes. A set of fish locks are being built, too. All Chinese flag ships use the locks or lift for free!

We wandered around the visitor center for a while before heading to the lift.

We visitors got to get on a boat and take the lift up! Julia was so excited; she had not imagined it was possible. The lift was not opened to passenger vessels until 2016, after testing of emergency evacuation procedures.

The lift is designed to help small and medium-sized ships, with a maximum displacement of about 3,000 tons, to traverse the dam. The water level behind the dam is up to 113 meters higher than the downstream river.

The lift is equipped with a chamber, which has a pool of water 120-meters long, 18-meters wide and 3.5-meters deep. The chamber, its mechanical systems and the water weigh 15,500 tons altogether.

These short videos replay the main aspects of the lift.

It was a slow, methodical process taking around 45 minutes.

The boat then traveled back to our cruise ship dock.

The Captain’s welcome address was followed by crew members performing ballroom-type dances, and later inviting everyone to join in silly dances (conga line and chicken dance).