Hubei Province by Boat

Monday night was out last night in Wuhan City, and we ended it with sparklers and flying wish lanterns on the shore of the Yangtze river

A Wish Lantern over the River

The next morning, after After Breakfast

Alex attempting to chug one last yogurt drink

and some crazy Wuhan traffic jams it was time to say goodbye to our new friends and we were off on the road to the Three Gorges Dams, but before disembarking on our cruise up the river we stopped at a restaurant carved into the side of a cliff.

Next on the itinerary was a hike up the same cliff and through some woods to a really cool series of caves up at the top, though poorly lit in most parts the rock formations inside the caves looked awesome

A Buddha Statue that was in the caves

after hiking back down, we saw some sturgeons,

My rendition of a sturgeon

bridge from beneath

and took a mini boat tour of the area we were in which was pretty cool. To get down to see the sturgeons and get on the little tour boats we had to walk down the first of many seriously impressive flights of stairs on the trip. It was quite an effort to get back to the top, to say the least.

Finally it was time to board the cruise ship where we'd be staying for the few nights. Unknowingly our boat passed through the Three Gorges Dam sometime between 3am and 4am that first night so we didn't get to see them at all, but despite that between the card games and scrabble and music on deck in the evenings and our excursions during the day the cruise was overall very pleasant.

Some sketches I made while on the boat

Our first outing while on the boat was a cruise up one of the tributaries in small wooden boats called Pea Pod boats, which was cool, the guide on the boat even sang us a traditional Tu Jia (The name of the people who live in the area) song. Along the way we also saw some monkeys on the shore and a crevice high up in a cliff with some coffins hanging in it.

Hanging coffins

The second trip off the boat was to a place called the white emperor city, which happened to contain another epic flight of stairs, the temple at the top was really cool, and totally worth the climb, with all it's awesome statuary, great view, and even a few stair climbing donkeys.