After another plane flight and a long bus ride through the countryside, we arrived at the banks of the Yangtze at the Three Gorges Dam site, the scale of which is a little mind-boggling. The cruise up the river to Chongqing was a little disappointing, as we had lots of mist, fog and smog, and it cut down on the viewing distance and made photography a mite challenging. The food on the ship was good and the rooms were nice. The level of the reservoir has obviously changed the nature of the Three Gorges area - kind of like filling the Grand Canyon with water. KR was feted for her birthday. Chinese pastries are a little like Central American pastries - they look a lot better than they taste, but her cake was actually not too bad. We exited the ship in Chongqing and our bags were carried across a pontoon bridge on the Yangtze balanced on a bamboo pole. Chongqing seemed quite large to me for a city I wasn't familar with (on my childhood globe it would have been Chungking), and I gulped when they said there were 28 million people in greater Chongqing. I think I bumped into almost every one of them while we were there. If you get a chance to visit Chongqing some day, check out the Dazu Rock Carvings - very cool.
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