The Awesome Unbelievable Wall

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Trip Start Aug 10, 2007 Previous
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  Beijing, China
Monday, August 20, 2007

The G reat W all of C hina .......... we had no idea - no idea of how far it was to get there, the crazy bus driver, the heat, the length of the hike, the condition of the wall, the danger, how long three hours actually is, the sense of achievement we would feel in the end!
 
So there we were, 7am in a mini cab off to the great wall, just 280 yaun each, including lunch.  No, first we stop and join a group of fellow travellers climbing out the back of a bakkie (with a canopy nogall).  Then we all wait.  By 8am we're off again to another spot, and this time there is the usual big bus waiting, half filled with travellers.  We all pile in and we're off.
 
The bus is old, no leg room, so the tall folk have their legs all over, us short guys we smile and giggle on the inside, yes the bus was made for hobbits

Bridge?

.  Chinese are very short and i'm sure the tour guides have a laugh as well.
 
1 hour later, toilet/shop stop and the next stop is at 11h30 at Jinshanling.  We are given the following instructions :"walk through this gate up to the wall, on the wall turn left and walk to Simatai. You have four hours, bye bye."
 
And that was that. So off we went, the intial climb up to the wall was very steep and the heat was ....... well very hot. 
 
On reaching the wall the first thing you notice is how isolated you are.  There is nothing but bush on both sides of the wall.  The wall itself was about 3m wide and as you looked along the length, the wall meandered and twisted off into the distance, hugging the topography. 
 
We had packed fruit and water, including our fat face flask, so we were ready for the challenge.  We set off to the left and admired the wall as we went.  Having been rebuilt 3 times, the last time in 1805, it was with a sense of history that we imagined how hard it must have been to drag stone to the wall, let alone then to build the wall

Broken wall

.  And this was done for the first time 400bc!  We imagined how lonely it must have been to stand guard at your watch tower, especially in winter  when it is -20.
 
The wall is built with a few watch towers and then a guard room.  The guard room was like a store room, with supplies and munitions.  We learnt most of this from a kind local who decided to join us and be our guide.  No manner of persuasion would make go, so we left her.  She especially liked us because we were South Africans and she said Mandella had come to the wall and she liked him. So on we went.
 
We imagined what it must have been like trying to fight off Gengkis Khan and his monguls and then we started to not care so much about the past as we found the present was becoming just as tough.
 
The wall is sneaky, it just gradually begins to rise and you don't really notice.  But then, you wipe the sweat off your face and faster than you can say "Beijing Duck", there she is, the first steep bit of wall.  I could be dramatic and over exagerate (and lets face it folks, I have been know to drop a porkie or two) but hells bells, this was steep

Great Wall

. When you took a step, you could see your foot in front of your face! We're talking 88 degree incline (ok, about 65 degrees), but still very steep.
 
At the end of the first steep hill I felt like Steffi after scoring a try with 3 dalians hanging on his back. I sat down and told Jules that I needed a rest, 2 new calves, a heart and some sun cream - heaven forbid I get a bit sunburnt! I asked the group of local water sellers all pointing and grinning at me if the helicopter air rescue lands on this part of the wall and they all smiled their wonderful toothless grins and stretched out their water bottles at me.  No heli rescue, but there is water ....... t hen I rembered, the miracle water - buddy knows, crunching tackle, down you go, a bit of water and we're ready to go.  Shit I thought, I would rather take on B akkies Bo tha than face the next three hours (oh forgot to mention, we had been walking for about 30 minutes).
 
Although the wall inclined it did seem to get easier.  Our "guide" was teaching us Chinese words as we went and we could not get rid of her.  I asked her if she knew the word for "voetsak", but she shook her head and gave me the toothless smile we had come to expect.  She slipped down the wall after tower #14 and produced a bag as if by magic, filled with "tfee shirts, poscaads"

Halfway house

.  She got quite irate when we said she could have a tip (no Dad, not the tip of our boot), a 5 yuan tip.  She demanded we buy postcards for 20 yuan, but she didn't know she was dealing with stubborn Jules.  Jules held her ground and our guide took the 5 yuan and went off mumbling and grumbling.
 
Good riddance we thought and off we went, 90 minutes gone, 4 bottles of h2o consumed and we had just reached the highest tower on our route, life was great.  No such luck ..... We quickly realised why she had done a runner - the wall had not been restored ahead, and as we walked it became quite dangerous in places.
 
We exchanged nervous laughs and decided this did not pass UK health and safety regulations - no guard rails (or even side wall - there was just a path with no sides), no trained first aider in sight, no emergency vacuation plan, no notice informing us where the closest hospital was etc.  Jokes aside it was very bad in places as the stone was loose and on the steeper sections you had to be very careful where you placed your foot. If you did slip, you would simply fall over the side of the wall - no way to call an ambulance and certainly no heli rescue available, so we had to be very careful.
 
It was tough and the video we took will show the steepness and danger, but it was also exhilarating to walk on a wall that soldiers had walked on over 2100 years ago

Lonely Soul

.
 
After lots of sweat loss we approached the Simatai tower, the end of our hike.  As we saw the umbrellas around the tower we knew we were close, we hoped skipped and bounded up the final slope, rounded the corner and I felt my heart jump into my mouth ...... a swinging suspension bridge, just like in the westerns, you know when Clint Eastwood starts crossing and then he steps on a plank and it breaks below him and he dangles high above the ground ....... like that.
 
Julie bounded across, skipping like a schoolgirl while I inched forward, step by step.  My fear of heights comes in handy at times like these, so I was feeling just dandy!  I was glad that I had a change of underwear with me as I would need it.  Julie, showing off, then decides to come back and "help" me cross.  Only she is making the bridge shake and sway, and then some idiot french people start on the bridge like it is Brands Hatch, so now I have no choice but to waddle across as fast as I can.  Then some toothless wonder (sorry that is porky pie, he did have one tooth on his bottom jaw) asks us for 5 yuan! We had to pay for crossing the stupid bridge ...... and then we rounded the corner only to see a steep steep climb to the exit.  I almost cried, but we slowly dragged ourselves up to the exit

More Wall to climb

.
 
And then it was over.  We couldn't really fathom this as we still walked another mile to the bottom of the wall.  We then went into resturant for our "end of the wall meal" but we couldn't eat, we just drank water after water.  It was a Chinese buffet but we were so tired we had lost all our apetite.
 
We had finished the hike in 3 hours and were proud of ourselves as many people strolled in after us, the last 4 hours 20 minutes after we had started.
 
So we boarded our cramped bus and got ready for the trip home.  My golly, what a trip.  The driver (the term used only because he was sitting behind the steering wheel) decided he would try and beat the land-speed record for buses and shot off from Simatai like Shumie's Ferrari coming out of the pits. He never used his brakes on the way back, he just hooted! He drove on the wrong side of the road when the car in front of us was going to slow and this often resulted in the on coming car having to take evasive action.
Everyone was quite worried but also happy to get home quicker, and we were in a big bus.
We eventually did get home and barely made it to the shower and into bed before we fell asleep, contented and proud of ourselves .
 

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On top of the world	Say Cheese	Steep baby steep	The End
The wall will not stop	Windy windy windy

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