I think where I left off on my last post I said, "So far, so good." After that we had a few hiccups. We were to catch the super fast train from Beijing to Yichang to board our boat for a four day cruise through the Three Gorges on the Yangtze River.

Our Beijing minder gave us our train tickets the day before departure. Problem number 1 - my passport number did not match the number stated on my train ticket. The numbers were correct, but the initial letters were incorrect. When I pointed this out to the tour guide he said, "No problem. Numbers matter, not letters."
Problem number 2 - everyone in the group had seats in carriage 4. Reg had a seat in carriage 8 and I had a seat in carriage 14. Not an earth-shattering problem, but on a 7 hour journey it would be nice to at least sit with each other. "No problem," said our guide. "Once on the train, switch with someone." (If only I knew how to speak the language that may have been an option.)

Luckily we arrived at the station very early. Of course the officious ticket stamper would not let me enter the station. My ticket and passport didn't match. Everyone else got through except me and another lady with a similar mistake on her ticket. We had a new minder by this time and she said,"No problem. I will take your passport and tickets to the ticket office and get it fixed. Wait here. 5 minutes."

After nearly an hour in the freezing cold (at least I had my overcoat; the poor lady with me had given her coat to her husband to take through check in) our minder returned. We could see the rest of the tour group pacing restlessly on the other side of the security barrier. Our minder said they wouldn't/couldn't fix the tickets. She suggested we enter through another security gate and hopefully the officer would not notice the mistake.

Long story short - we picked a not so efficient checker and got through with our tickets stamped.

Next problem - seating arrangements. Our minder said to put our luggage on carriage 4 with the rest of the group and then she would try and get us a seat together. Well, with the carriages so big and the train so long, by the time we boarded, our minder had to go because the train was departing. Reg and I were left standing like lost sheep with the luggage in carriage 4. As there were a couple of spare seats (not together, but at least in the same carriage) we sat in those. That was fine until the next stop when boarding passengers wanted their seats. No one spoke English, so Reg and I roamed like homeless people, from seat to seat, carriage to carriage, between train stops. Once we even found seats side by side, but as it was the business class carriage we were promptly chased out. It was a long, lonely journey. Sue didn't fare much better. Her seat was in a row of three. The two seats beside her were taken by a man and wife and their twin babies.

The train was smooth and comfortable and reached speeds up to 300 kph. I don't know what the scenery was like as it was either very smoggy or very foggy all the way. I made many new Chinese friends throughout the day and they probably told me some interesting stories. (I am very good at nodding and smiling.) They may even have had an interesting story to tell their families that night over dinner about the strange foreigners who roamed the train all day, nodding and smiling and looking very confused.

So, that was our first day outside Beijing. Suffice to say we were ecstatic to claim our luggage from carriage 4, reclaim our tour group and board our cruise boat at Yichang.

The next four days aboard the "Victoria Katarina" were lovely - cruising serenely down the Yangtze through spectacular scenery. This was the trip highlight so far.

As this was the last cruise for the season, tourists were few. In fact our tour group of 35 had the whole boat to ourselves, along with a party of eight Chinese.

There is something very relaxing about sitting on a deck chair watching local life on the river banks pass by. When not in inhabited areas, the sheer cliffs of the Three Gorges soared above and took our breath away.

Each day the boat would stop and take us on some very interesting excursions included in the fare. In addition there were optional trips you could pay for. For us, the highlights were a trip to view the Three Gorges Dam, a trip in a smaller boat down the incredibly beautiful Shennong Stream, and a visit to the Red Pavilion at Shibaozhai.

I have seen the longest dam (Aswan) and the highest dam (Hoover). Now I have seen the largest water conservancy project ever built. The Three Gorges Dam has a storage capacity of 39.9 billion cubic metres. We passed through five locks to raise us from the lower level of the Yangtze to the upper level.

We left the cruise in Chongqing, the largest city in the world with a population of 35 million, and had a day of sight seeing there before catching a night flight to Xian to see the Terra-cotta Warriors.

Fortunately my passport matched my air ticket, but this time it was the turn of another group member to be denied a boarding pass for the crime of mis-spelt tickets issued by the company. The trick of going to another counter and hoping the mistake would be overlooked worked again, and we all made the flight.