Day 7- Lazy Day on the ship

The next morning I woke up very early by the rocking movement of the ship. My wife was sound asleep. I decided to go for a walk and some stretching on the top deck where they were serving hot coffee for the early birds. The ship was moving downstream at a pretty good clip. The river seems to be quite wide at this point and we were off towards our first day of the cruise. While most of the early birds were sitting around and drinking coffee I was attracted towards a very slender woman who was getting ready to practice some serious Yoga exercises. Being a novice Yoga buff myself, I introduced myself to her . She is a British photo journalist on a 5 week assignment in China and she is married to a Kashmiri man now living in England. She was an advanced student of Yoga and I could not keep up with her art form and flexibility. But we enjoyed the unique experience of Yoga on the Yangtze river.

This morning, there were no planned activity on the ship and most tourist sat on the deck and watched the scenery pass by. There was quite a bit of commercial traffic on the river and we were told that 40% of all of China's output passes through the river to its final destinations around the world. Breakfast and lunch were both buffet style and consisted of both Chinese and western food. In the afternoon we had a shore excursion to an ancient Chinese Temple which will be move several hundred feet above its current location as the reservoir fills up with water and reaches its full lever of 178 meters in 2009.

Tonight was special on the ship. It is night when the captain of the ship hosts a special welcome for the guests. There is a reception followed by dinner and entertainment and we were supposed to be dressed in our fine clothes. But most tourists had only casual clothes and the captain did not seem to mind the fact that some were in shorts and T- shirts!

The entertainment program was entirely by the ships crew of men and women and they had developed a very nice multi-cultural program of dance and music with very colorful costumes. Although they are not professional entertainers, they took this very seriously and made a nice impression on the guests and received standing ovations. We decided spend the balance of the evening at glass enclosed bar and the ship's stern. Tomorrow we will not only be passing through the three gorges, but we will also go on a side trip in one of the rapid flowing tributary of the river in row boats. We were told that we will be passing the first gorge very early in the morning.