BlowWater: Yangtze river cruise

After a few months of hiatus, lets continue with my China tour. We boarded the Victoria Anna at Chongqing around 5pm++. Victoria Anna is the latest ship on Victoria Cruises fleet of 5 star cruise ships. We specifically plan on taking the Yangtze river cruise on this ship and it was worth it. Of course you can't compare this cruise ship to those huge cruise ship like those in Star Cruises fleet.

Victoria Anna

We took the downstream route which is for 4 days and 3 nights. It is the more popular route because the trip is shorter compared to the upstream route. The ship set sail at 9pm. The next day, we reach the first shore excursion to Fengdu, the City of Ghost at around 2pm.

This Stone monument is actually an incomplete and abandon hotel

The entrance

After a short bus ride to the entrance, you can choose to climb the stairs or take the ski lift to go up Mount Ming Shan. We took the ski lift up of cource but I chose to walk back down.

We were only able to visit the Ming Shan and didn't have the the time to actually go over to the Ghost Palace. On the next morning, around 6:30am the ship approaches the first gorge, Qutang Gorge.

Its a Chameleon!

At around 8:15am, its time for second shore excursion. This time we are going to take a small boat through Daning River to see the Lesser Gorges. After that, we change to an even smaller boat, a sampan actually to check out the Mini Three Gorges.

The entrance to Daning river

The sampan that we took

Back to Victoria Anna for lunch. After that around 1:45pm , we reach the second gorge, Wu gorge

We reach the last gorge, Xiling gorge around 5:30pm. Due to heavy fog, I didn't manage to take any photo. The last gorge wasn't that great anyway. The next day is the end of the cruise and the last shore excursion is to the three gorges dam.

The three gorges dam cover by heavy fog.

See more photos at Flickr