China Adventure, Part 2

After spending a couple of days in Shanghai,

we flew to Wuhan to board the river cruise.

As you can imagine,

cruising the Yangtze was not always beautiful.

There is a lot of industry along the river,

as well as small cities and towns.

We did get into the mountains and began to see some

gorgeous areas along the river.

This is a large hotel going up the side of the mountain.

The pagoda style buildings were always fun to see,

since we don't have these at home. 

There are many areas along the river that seemed to be accessible

only by boat. Therefore, we saw some very different looking boats.

The Yangtze River

One of our tours was to the Three Gorges Dam...

the largest hydroelectric dam in the world.

 It was built between 1994 and 2012 and

displaced 1.3 million people.

There is a lock system here for ships and boats to go through

in order to navigate the river.

 

Upstream from the dam,

what had once been a little creek became

a large tributary to the Yangtze.

We took a Sampan boat ride through some of this

area and it was just beautiful.

 

During the rainy season,

more water is released through the dam

and the water level rises to the tree line 

in the photo above.

Many villages and towns were flooded in this area

when the dam was completed.

 This was such a peaceful ride.

 

 Can you imagine going up all of these stairs to each the pagoda

at the top?

The view must have been spectacular.

And, of course, we were able to see pandas!!

We visited the Chongqing Zoo and saw a number of Pandas.

These guys above are about 2 years old.

 

This guy was adorable!

Each panda eats about 40 pounds of fresh bamboo a day!

If you want a panda,

China will rent a pair for $1 million a year.

Plus you have to provide the bamboo!

Any baby born to a rented pair of pandas

is sent back to China after the age of 2.

I'll leave you with this cutie and continue the story in a day or so.

Happy Day!