China Day 9 - Three Gorges Dam 8/23/12
Tai Chi again this morning. It was nice and cool. The weather today is excellent with blue skies and no fog, which is very unusual. Also,today is the first day that any passenger ships are being allowed through the locks. Because of the typhoons and flooding, they had a backlog of nearly 1000 ships trying to go up the river. Last night we sailed through the guazhando (sp?) dam, which was the test dam for the three gorges. Today we will pass through five locks at the three gorges.
The dam tour was very impressive. Photographs simply cannot do justice or give any idea of scale. 28 million cubic meters of concrete and 32 turbine generators. Twice as large as the no. 2 dam in Argentina I believe. Each lock will hold six vessels, so these things are massive. It will take nearly 3.5 hours to get through all of them.
While on deck this afternoon I had a nice fruity rum drink while enjoying the sunshine and wished for a nice cool pool to splash about.
Met some interesting people on the trip. Lots of Brits and Aussies. Lots of Americans too. One woman, who looks like Jamie Lee Curtis, Allyson, is a hoot. She is from the south and lives in Oklahoma City. She has a story for everything and is just a riot. Richard from England is just like Wallace from Wallace and Gromit. He is a retired police officer. Everyone in our tour group seems nice enough and for the most part seem to get along quite well.
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