An early start today – breakfast at 6.30am as our trip to the Three Gorges dam leaves at 7.30am. It is misty when we arrive at the Dam Centre which would normally offer a panoramic view of the whole complex. Nonetheless it is still an impressive view of the dam and the 10 locks – five for upstream traffic and five for downstream. Andy is very ill today with a bad tummy and all that entails. So he is struggling with the trip and looking very sorry for himself. Vivien offers to provide him with some Chinese herbal medicine which her parents have with them and hopefully that will do the trick. We return to the boat around 10am in time to finish packing before we sail through the last of the three gorges – Xiling Gorge. This is the largest of the gorges and the sun is out so the views from the deck are wonderful. We disembark at Yichang at around noon and then the fun begins as we start our transfer to Wuhan four-and-half hours downstream by bus.
Work on the dam started in 1994 although it had first been proposed by Sun Yat Sen in the early part of the twentieth century and later supported by Mao Zedong. It is the largest hydro-electric project in the world and at a height of its construction it employed 30,000 people. By the time of its completion in 2009 it will have displaced 1.3 million people – all of whom received 20,000 yuan in compensation and have been re-housed in new towns that have been built above the flood level. Most were farmers and one of the biggest problems is finding work for them now that their farmland has been submerged. The dam is 3,035 metres in length and 185 metres wide and the whole complex covers 15 square miles – absolutely colossal! The water level behind the dam will have risen by 175m by 2009 and created a 600 km long reservoir.
Our transfer doesn’t run as smoothly as we had hoped, but then we should be used to taking the unexpected in our stride by now. There is a taxi driver waiting when the boat docks, but he promptly disappears to take another fare leaving us to squeeze onto to the bus taking the Dutch group to the railway station. We’ve paid 300 yuan at the start of the trip for the transfer to the bus station and the bus tickets to Wuhan but so far no sign of the tickets and the driver’s gone AWOL. But we needn’t have worried – when we get to what passes for the long distance bus station, the tickets appear to have been paid for; at least no-one asks us for any money. We get the impression that the other passengers have been waiting for us and we are bundled onto to the bus with no time to buy any food for the journey. Eventually we hit the expressway between Yichang and Wuhan which runs along the valley of the Yangtze where cotton and rice appear to be the main crops. All seems to be going well as we are entertained with a Jackie Chan movie followed by Chinese stand-up comedians played at full volume on the overhead TV screen. Until that is, a very loud bang signals that one of the rear tyres has blown. You might think that at this point we would stop, but no, we limp on to the next exit where a roadside mechanic quickly changes the tyre and we are off again in under 30 minutes.
We arrive in Wuhan at about 6pm, dropped unceremoniously in a street in this huge city with no idea of where we are, other than we have not arrived at the long-distance bus station. We stop several taxi’s but none can read the hostel address we have had written for us in Chinese. We resort to phoning the hostel to get them to give directions to the next taxi driver we hail. But we might as well have been in London as this taxi won’t (or can’t, we aren’t sure) go across the river. Finally we get a taxi who will take us. But half-an-hour later and with 35 yuan on the clock (the journey should only cost 10 yuan or so we thought) we phone the hostel again – is this taxi giving us the run-around? Apparently not, the bus had dropped miles from bus station. Eventually we arrive in the vicinity of the hostel, which turns out to be down an alley off the main road and after another call to the hostel we let the taxi go and wait on the street corner to be collected! And the moral of this tale is ensure that hostel directions are legible and know your arrival point. Fortunately we had the hostel telephone number otherwise we would have really been in the shit! Oh the joys of travelling!