The Three Gorges Tour Continues...

We had a leisurely morning learning how to play Mah-Jong - a bit bamboozling but great fun and hopefully we weren't doing badly by the end.
 
After lunch we had the opportunity to go onto the bridge of the cruise ship to see the men at work - hence the main blip.
 
Then our cruise took us into three sets of three gorges! There's the main Three Gorges, the Lesser Three Gorges and the Mini Three Gorges into which we were taken in progressively smaller boats. They were all pretty dramatic, but the Mini Gorges especially so. Of particular interest is the fact that the water level in all the gorges rose about 40 metres early in the "noughties" when the Three Gorges Dam was completed: whole towns were submerged and the residents located either to higher ground or to other locations far away. At this time of year the water level is well below its maximum - on the extras you can see the high water mark which is reached every year in winter.
 
The first extra is a fun one - the shape of the cliffs is supposed to represent a lady lying on her front, with her head at the left end and her feet at the right: we liked the translation of the sign next to her - "Peak of Inverted Sleep Beauty"!
 
The second extra shows a couple of traditional sampans moored near the cliff face.
 
The third extra shows a walkway high above the water level. This is actually a reconstruction of the original cliff-face walkways (now deeply submerged) in the Lesser Gorges, along which men used to walk to drag boats along the river with ropes. Prior to the dam the river was very much shallower and indeed there were white water rapids which made navigation somewhat hazardous.

(Thankyou to everyone who has been commenting, starring and "hearting" my recent blips: at one stage I had one blip at No.3 on Page 1 of Popular and another next to it at No.4. Very exciting!)