Location: Sumatai, China
| Lat/Lng: |
39.91683, 116.39828 |
Got up early for the Great Wall hiking tour. Ate at our hotel’s buffet breakfast ($3) – very good, but our stomachs are still not feeling fine. We were supposed to meet the bus driver in the lobby at 7:30, we soon learned that in Chinese time that is more like 8:30, which is perfect for us because it matches our time.
Boarded the mini van and talked to some nice British people. The driving in China is certainly all you can - extremely exciting and aggressive, horn beeping and driving on the opposite side of the road or breakdown lane to pass constantly. We almost hit a few cyclists on the way home and the driver didn’t even hit the brakes. Good to know for future reference. A little confusion about which trip people in the van were actually on – the hiking or just seeing the wall trip. Got to the starting point and bought tickets and starting walking up to the wall. We had some people follow us for a while interested in being our tour guides. If possible we prefer to travel as independently as possible. We gracefully declined their offer, but they kept on coming (we would too if we saw some idiots with cameras strapped to them and bottles of water in hand), so we had to take alternate measures. Basically, we starting sprinting up the wall, they tried hanging on for a while (these people could move), running behind us, but we finally topped out and they decided to go guide some other people that were behind us.
The wall was pretty unbelievable. It was about a 6 mile hike, some areas were renovated, but some were crumbling and you had to take dirt paths around those parts. It is amazing to think that construction started in the Qin Dynasty (221-207 BC)!!!! Took lots of pictures and walked over the suspension bridge to Sumatai, where the vans were picking us up. The drive home was even more exciting than the ride there. There was a group of French woman probably in their 60’s. These women were incredible, they were very time conscious, yelling at the guides and drivers if they were late, but when it came time to ride the wild rollercoaster it didn’t phase them. Other Germans on board started getting ripped and the bus driver pulled over and told a German couple, who were silent and very nice the whole ride that they should “get off and walk around the corner”. The whole trip was awesome!!! Can’t wait for tomorrow…..
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