Beijing Day 6 - The Great Wall

You can't go to China without seeing The Great Wall. So that's pretty much all we did on our last day. A chartered ride picked us up at our hotel at around 5:00 am and drove us around Beijing to huff exhaust and pick up all the other passengers for the day. The section of the wall we hiked is about 2 hours away from the city. To get up to the wall, you take an old, rickety cable car to the top. There are several warning signs that tell you there will probably be technical problems on the way up, so you're not supposed to freak out when your stuck dangling in the air for a few minutes at a time.It's fairly isolated from what we could tell as we were the only people on the wall other than people selling water and souvenirs. Several times, Savannah and I were left completely alone. We hiked 10 km of the wall. When I first was the wall, I was surprised to see how it stays along the mountain ridge to maintain the highest possible ground. I had this ignorant idea that most of the wall was somewhat flat with a few hills to walk up and down. A year in Korea got us used to hiking up mountains on a regular basis, so we were somewhat prepared, but we forgot to factor in a hot Chinese Summer sun, the humidity, and the fact that it was high noon when we were climbing the peaks. I think we paid for a few Chinese kids' college tuition with all the bottles of water we drank. The wall itself has several parts that are left as-is and several others that have been restored. It's a good mix as I like seeing things in their unaltered state as well as seeing them at their full potential. It may sound cliche, but pictures just don't do this world wonder justice. At the end of our hike, we got some ice cream, then took a zip-line from one of the mountain peaks to a river basin below. Here's a video of us on the zip-line. It was a pretty cool way to get down from the wall. Our charter bus then took us out for dinner, then dropped us back off at home.

From Beijing

Cable cars to the top

From Beijing

A small stretch of the wall

From Beijing

In front of a watch tower

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Another stretch of the wall

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Parts of the wall are pretty decrepit

From Beijing

It's ok to cool off your belly in China. Men often roll their shirts off to cool off.

From Beijing

From Beijing

The last couple kilometers were downhill. Awesome!

From Beijing

Crossing a drawbridge over a river

From Beijing

We made it!

We had to get up early the next day to go to Munich, so we took it easy the rest of the night. Here's a link to a slideshow of all 300 of our pictures from Beijing.