A Yangtze River Cruise Is Still Worthwhile

by Judy McEuen

You know I often say we're not cruise people, but we have done some exotic river trips... the Nile in Egypt and the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea, and now this Yangtze River Cruise we included in our small group custom tour to China.

I wish we had gotten to China years ago; it would've been wonderful to see the Three Gorges before the Chinese started filling that dam... but we didn't. The Chinese declared the Three Gorges Dam completed right after we left. They will be filling the dam for months to come. We took the cruise anyway on our trip to China, wondering.... would it be worth it or not?

Having been, I can tell you... and your readers... that even with the dam mostly filled, a Yangtze River Cruise IS still worth it.

When we were planning our trip, I was convinced that we should take a short 3 day/2 night cruise; since we like to stay really active, I thought that would be better.

Tips for Planning A Yangtze River Cruise

• First, because we were a small group we could fly into Yichang which deleted a 4 hour bus ride from Wuhan. The plane was small, so big groups might not be able to do this. You know we like to be independent, but even pre-packaged small group tours might be able to do this.
  
  
• Second, the upriver cruise was less crowded, and our crew told us that this is generally the case. On our cruise there were only 60 passengers... on the downriver return they were expecting 190! It was very nice not having so many people... the dining room was less crowded, and it was easier getting on and off the boat.
  
  
• And finally, we were glad we had more time to see the sights--even WE felt that the shorter cruise would have short-changed us on some of our excursions to places like the Ghost City of Fengdu or the Lesser gorges.

Take A Yangtze River Cuise and Check Our Tips for China