This was a must see! The Great Wall was amazing. Being able to take pictures of the Wall without anyone in the background was a bonus. After chatting with Apple at Backpackers hostel, it was a better idea joining this tour up to the Great Wall because by the time we pay for a ride up and entrance fee, the cost was about the same if we found our way up to the wall ourselves. Our tour group consisted of ourselves and Andreas from Berlin and Maricio from Columbia who were great companions on this awesome experience.
The ride to Jinshanling was almost 3 hours. Upon arriving, we elected to take the cable car to enjoy more of our time on the wall rather than hiking up. This turned out to be a mistake after the lift engine died and we were suspended for about half an hour, luckily we weren't up there longer. At the beginning of our trek on the wall we enjoyed amazing views. Each of us took some silent moments to enjoy what we'd all dreamed about before. Not long however, Hawkers arrived to join us.
They followed us halfway with the hope that we will buy souvenirs. When we arrived at the half point of our walk, the hawkers insisted that we buy something and how much they needed the money to support their families. At the end of this we gave one of the hawkers 10 yuan to leave us alone. This really wasn't that disturbing, we all enjoyed our time soaking in the views.
We spent 4 hours hiking along the Great Wall and at one point stopping for lunch with our fellow tourist friends. When we reached Simatai there was a suspension bridge over a creek flowing into a small dammed lake. On the climb up to the road we heard someone yelling as we saw them sail across the pond attached to a cable. So, following Andreas' lead we jumped on, one by one. Not too scary, it was a lot of fun and a great way to end the day.
A short boat ride took us to where we would meet our driver. Our trip wasn't quite finished as we required a tire change about halfway home (this happened to be at the Olympic Rowing Complex - not that there was much to see). In a short time our driver, Joe had us on our way and back to the hostel.
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