Tuesday, June 14
The Victoria Cruise's Jenna set sail (can you really say that if there are no sails?) at 5:00 am, heading down-river towards Yichang. The river banks are often pretty industrial, but they've also been dotted with rural sections. There was fog early in the day so we had to pull up to shore for a little while until the sun burned it off. The delay altered the itinerary so they changed our shore excursion to Feng Du instead of Shibaozhai. I hadn't done much reading ahead of time about this area so I wasn't disappointed about missing something I had my heart set on seeing. I'm just looking forward to getting off the boat for a little while each day.

I'm reading a book right now, River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze River by Peter Hessler. It's about his teaching experience with the Peace Corp in the late 1990's in Fulin, China. We passed through the city during lunch today. It's really interesting to read about the area just before the Three Gorges Dam was finished. It's hard to imagine how much has changed in the 20 years since the book was written. I need to find some documentaries about the building of the dam and see some before and after pictures.

Speaking of pictures, here are some.

Enjoying coffee on our balcony.

Sunset in Chongqing.

Sunrise in the fog.

Interesting geology. Makes me want to do some research...

River traffic - barges with sand and coal, car ferries, cruise ships, fishermen, you name it, it was on the river. Along with trash, such as plastic, shoes, the carcass of a pig, more plastic, etc.