'The Great Wall of China'...It's Great

January 20th 2011

The Great Wall...ask anyone to name the first thing that comes to mind when they think of China and it'll probably be the Great wall or Curry! We decided to make our own way out to the Mutianyu section of the wall for a number of reasons: * We didn't want to be on any timeframe, * We're not huge fans of 'tours' like this one and it usually attracts at least 1 annoying American, * It cost's less.

So we made our way to Domzihmen on the subway to get the bus to Huariou once we arrive there we'll have to get a mini-bus or taxi to the wall. Sounds complicated we thought so too, but what adventure is easy...or so we thought, when we arrived at the bus station to get the 916 one of the bus guys that works there with feck all English asked were we heading to Mutianyu, we said yes, he handed his work bag to his colleague and took us on the bus to the wall and gestured he'd let us know when were there, the bus took over an hour to get to Huariou and another 40 minutes or so to the wall. During the trip the bus guy started showing me his hand massager for good blood circulation and urged me to have a go. 

When the bus arrived in Huariou we were nudged and followed the guy off, next thing we were in his car and driving towards the wall, he turns around and gives us the price which was the standard price from there, we headed up and he wanted to take us back and was willing to wait there 4 hours! We must have been paying him more then his days wages for him to pack up and leave for the day.

We arrived and decided to get the cablecar up to the base of the wall as we'd been told you'll do enough climbing up there, it's an amazing place, an absolutely unforgettable experience and probably the top sight we've been to so far. It was everything I imagined and more, the hardest part was the steep climb up the mountain, it looks easy in the pictures but it's tough but definitely not at all undo-able. This part of the wall is pretty much unsupervised so you can pretty much climb what you want at your own peril (see picture! :D )

We headed back to the start and headed down the other section of the wall, it is very time consuming but we loved every minute of it, there was even a woman selling drinks on the great wall and no finer place to have a beer! We walked down one of the paths to the bottom but we saw earlier that there's a toboggan to the bottom somewhere..I can only question how safe that actually is.

We headed back towards the bus with our new friend and he dropped us to the bus and waited with us until the bus arrived, barely a word of English in him but a decent guy all the same..

Another thing marked off the bucket list!