Yangtze Excursions

[Floridiana]

I was answering a question about free time on the excursions in another thread. To make sure it doesn't get lost:

 

We have just come back from a Yangtze River cruise with China Focus. Our group only had 8 people and no permanent guide for the entire month.

 

There were 5 opportunities for shore excursions on the Yangtze. Each time, the ship provided an English speaking guide who picked us up on the ship. Three excursions were included, 2 were extra and we did just one of the extras.

 

Two excursions were walking tours right of the ship. If you did not want to listen to your guide, you could easily walk on your own - in the crowd of 200 other passengers from your ship. Please let your guide know. There was also plenty of free time included.

 

One excursion was by boat into an impressive side canyon. You need to stick with your group on the small boat, but you can walk without the guide farther back into the gorge.

 

One excursion was by bus to the dam and the locks. For security reasons, you need to stay with your group until you have reached the site where the guide gave us some free time before she met us again for explanations and to return to the bus. Excursion 5, which we did not do, was a bus trip to a temple with 300 steps if I remember correctly and probably had a similar arrangement as the tour to the dam.