Migratory Musings: Asian Adventure: Three Gorges Dam

Asian Adventure: Roof of the World Tour Overview
Asian Adventure: Cathay Pacific B777-300ER Business Class San Francisco to Hong Kong
Asian Adventure: Cathay Pacific Lounge Review: The Cabin at HKG
Asian Adventure: Cathay Dragon A330-300 Business Class Hong Kong to Beijing
Asian Adventure: Regent Beijing Hotel
Asian Adventure: Beijing - Dongcheng District
Asian Adventure: Beijing - The Great Wall
Asian Adventure: Beijing - Run-ze Jade Garden
Asian Adventure: Beijing - The Sacred Way of the Ming Tombs
Asian Adventure: Beijing - The Legend of Kung Fu
Asian Adventure: Beijing - Tiananmen Square
Asian Adventure: Beijing - The Forbidden City
Asian Adventure: Beijing - Hutong Tour via Rickshaw, Tea Tasting, Flying to Xi’an
Asian Adventure: Hotel Shangri-La Xi’an
Asian Adventure: Xi’an - Qing Dynasty Terra Cotta Warriors
Asian Adventure: Xi’an - Tang Dynasty Dinner and Show
Asian Adventure: Xi’an Wrap-Up, Flying to Lhasa, Lhasa Home Visit
Asian Adventure: Shangri-La Hotel Lhasa
Asian Adventure: Lhasa - Jokhang Temple and Barkhor Market
Asian Adventure: Lhasa - Canggu Nunnery and Sera Monastery
Asian Adventure: Lhasa - Potala Palace
Asian Adventure: Leaving Lhasa and Flying to Chongqing
Asian Adventure: Viking Emerald
Asian Adventure: Shibaozhai Temple
Asian Adventure: Cruising the Three Gorges
Asian Adventure: Three Gorges Dam
Asian Adventure: Jingzhou City Walls Tour
Asian Adventure: Wuhan - Hubei Bells Performance and Provincial Museum
Asian Adventure: Shanghai - Shanghai Museum
Asian Adventure: Fairmont Peace Hotel, Shanghai
Asian Adventure: Shanghai - Old Shanghai and Yuyan Gardens
Asian Adventure: The New Otani Tokyo Hotel
Asian Adventure: Tokyo - City Tour
Asian Adventure: Mt. Fuji and Hakone Tour Returning by Shinkansen
Asian Adventure: ANA Suites Lounge Review, Tokyo Narita
Asian Adventure: All Nippon Airways B777-300ER First Class Tokyo Narita to Houston

The next morning we awoke to find ourselves docked below the Three Gorges Dam. Overnight we'd made our way through a series of five locks to reach our current location. Using a metric of installed capacity - how many megawatts of electricity it can sustainably generate - this is the world's largest power station. Though the dam first opened in 2009, it wasn't fully functional until 2012. The locks we'd been through opened a bit later.

It appears that setting the dam up for tourist visits wasn't an afterthought as there was a very nice setup for visitors. Tour buses arranged by Viking drove us from the boat, across a bridge that gave us a nice look at the dam from the water, and to the visitor's center. There we checked in and were loaded on to buses specifically set up for transportation to the dam. We were let out in this area at the bottom of a hill but there were escalators to take us to the top.

Riding the escalators to the viewing area

On the plaza at the top of the hill there was a viewing platform for those who wanted to climb up.

Upper viewing platform

Fountain on the main plaza

There were several spots that allowed us to view the activity of the lock. There are actually ten locks - five going each way. You'll never have boats in consecutive chambers of the locks so at most you could have boats in three chambers going upstream and three going downstream. Of course depending on the size of the boats, there may be more than one in a lock chamber.

Upper section of the locks

Middle section of the locks

Lower section of the locks

On the other hand our view of the dam itself weren't all that exciting. We saw lots of concrete (37 million cubic yards) and steel (463K metric tons) but...it's basically a building and not all that pretty. Massive enough to be seen from space, up close we could only see parts at a time and we can't walk across it like with the Hoover Dam so it's kinda hard to appreciate how large it really is.

Fortunately the bus did slow down as we drove across the bridge so we could see ships moving through the locks.

In addition to the locks there is also a ship lift that will allow boats of up to 3000 tons to be picked up and transported upstream or downstream in about 30-40 minutes as opposed to the 3-4 hours in the locks.

Gezhouba Dam

We returned to the ship and sailed through the Xiling Gorge, the third and final one. Later in the afternoon we experienced going through the lock of the Gezhouba Dam. We had to wait awhile for another boat to join us in the lock but once it did, things actually moved fairly quickly...for a lock.