Wednesday, April 26^th, is another “go-go” day on the Sinorama Holidays tour of China.  Up at 4:00 am in Xi’an, breakfast at 5:00 am, checkout and depart the hotel at 5:45 am, ride the bus for 1 hour to the airport, and fly 1.5 hours to Chongqing.  Chongqing is even BIGGER (34 million people) than Beijing (just 22 million people), and is growing so fast that they update their city map every 3 months!

Upon arrival the weather was “messy”… cold, rainy, foggy and windy.  In each city, our main tour organizer (Mary the Dictator) receives help from a local guide.  Today, we have a very funny Chinese guide (Paul).  We have already experienced local guides that can speak decent English and there have been local guides with poor English speaking skills.  Some days it’s a real challenge to understand what the guides are trying to explain.

First stop… the Panda Zoo located near the city center.  We get off the bus dressed in full rain gear and some people have (or buy) umbrellas due to the constant rain falling. It feels like our trip to Costa Rica!

We received a great amount of information from our local guide about Pandas.  The Chinese government has a well-established conservation and breeding program to rebuild the Panda population because it was decimated during periods of famine in the 1950’s, 1960’s and 1970’s.  From just a few hundred Panda’s still alive the 1990’s, there are over 2,500 Panda’s now.  One of the local guides funny stories is about “Panda Porn”.  Since Pandas mostly eat, sleep, and poop, they have been experimenting with showing the males “panda porn” to get them interested in mating.  I forget the percentage, but the majority of male pandas NEVER engage in mating.

There were a few other animals in the zoo, but it was raining so hard that we didn’t wander around much.  What we did see was quite cramped and sad.  I think this zoo should stick with just having pandas and call it a day.

After another typical Chinese lunch in Chongqing city, we board the bus for a short drive to the port.  It is still raining, but due to the low level of the river, we need to walk quite a distance and down many stairs to get to the river.  We then traverse MANY floating pontoons to reach our ship, the Yangtze Gold 3.

At this spring time of year the river level is 155 meters above sea level.  The lowest level of the river occurs in the summer at 145 meters above sea level.  The maximum level of the river is 175 meters above sea level in the winter.  After completion of the dam in 2016, the water has been closely monitored and controlled (more information from Dennis in future blog posts).

We’re traveling on the newest and largest river cruise ship traversing the Yangtze River from Chongqing to Jinzhou.  Our 5 day / 4 night cruise travels down one of the top 3 mightiest rivers in the world.  Only the Nile River and the Amazon River are slightly longer than the Yangtze River in China.

The Yangtze Gold 3 cruise ship has a capacity of 400 passengers with 110 crew members.  Our cabin is quite nice with a private balcony plus a really big and comfortable king bed. The bathroom and shower are ample in size for a cruise ship.

When we left Chongqing, we watched with amazement the city lights along the river and the other boats pulling away.  It was such a spectacular view that I thought I was dreaming.

LATEST NEWS…  skipping ahead of this blog post to being “live” on Sunday, April 30th.

We FINALLY are able to post this blog (from a few days ago) on Sunday night (Diana’s actual birthday) in Wuhan.  We’re staying at a lovely Marriott Renaissance hotel and the Wi-Fi is just like home.  Too bad we’re so pooped that we can’t write more blogs tonight.

We’re SUPER BLESSED because we join 16 other folks in our group who are travelling back to LA with us on Monday afternoon.  We don’t have to leave the hotel until NOON tomorrow!  I’m  sure we’ll wake up early as we have done for the last 10 days, but then I will relish rolling over and sleeping some more.  Gotta love lying flat on a real bed tonight before our LONG journey home tomorrow.