Great Wall, Beijing, May 12, 2010

We signed up for a tour hiking a 6 mile section of the Great Wall from Jinshanling to Simatai. The van came to pick us up at 7 am, but that was not a problem since we’ve been waking early. We were soon to be even more fully awake and alert…

We get packed into a small van made for small people—which we are not. We’re maybe halfway there, cruising along at about 50 or 60 mph, and everybody is relaxed and enjoying the ride. We can see a really old man on the side of the road up ahead, and he’s shuffling along more than walking. Seems like he looks our way and sees us coming, but as we approach he starts crossing the road. Our driver honks, but the old man just keeps going, so the driver slams on the brakes and gets the van going sideways down the road as he swerves to miss the guy. He does, by inches, but manages to throw everybody around inside the van.

Close one – no way to start the day, running over an old guy…

Unload at Jinshanling, and with no warm up, hit the stairs just to get to the top of the wall. That would turn out to be the easy part of the day. The 6 mile ‘hike” was essentially 6 miles of stairs. But, it was beautiful when you could take a few minutes to catch your breath and look out over the mountains. Photos don’t do it justice. Local farm women follow you for what seem like ages, making themselves helpful by taking photos of you, and offering a steady hand when you are climbing up and down somewhat treacherous sections of the wall. In return, you buy outrageously overpriced souvenirs. The lady that seemed to latch on to us was very nice, and wanted to talk in English. At 41, this very small, agile woman has two children and spends at least 3 days a week making this trek of about 4 miles each way on the wall—obviously in incredible shape. I wondered about the 2 children until I realized that she is Mongolian, not Chinese.

Though physically challenging, we finished the hike without incident, except for what would end up being really, really sore legs. And a bit of annoyance at this Frenchman who said we were “so American” when I had an energy bar and he kept asking if we had potatoes in our bag. According to him, Americans eat potatoes all the time. Go figure.