Jinshialing to Simatai last day hiking

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Jinshialing to Simatai

Last day hiking



We woke up at dawn and quietly packed up the tent and backpacks. We had to be very careful, quiet and do everything with a little light because there were some lights in the previous and next towers and we did not know if those lights were of tourists ( best luck) or guards ( bad luck and trouble). We ate a quick breakfast and while doing this we realized there was someone coming to our tower without making a sound we waited until the man left. At this point we were pretty sure the man was a guard and we did not want to risk being caught so we decided to leave the Great Wall. All in all we were satisfied and happy to have seen and been so closed to Simatai. When we were ready to leave the Wall and called it the end of the hiking trip we realized there was a Chinese man hiking down from the next tower and his family or friends were hiking towards our tower that seen everything we saw the previous night made sense. The lights were from those people making signals to each other saying they were safe. We then decided to o for a daily hike up to Simatai. We hid our backpacks in the bushes near our tower and headed up to Simatai. We walked through steep downhills and uphills, uneven steps, high and low steps along the wall which was pretty well maintained some of he parts were actually very well kept. We walked for about an hour until we saw what seemed like a valley between two mountains knw which was the tallest and where the highest point in Simatai was. At the end of this tower we saw three Chinese men sitting down smoking cigars and they seemed like guards, one of them had an olive button down shirt with what seemed like an insignia non the sleeves. We decided to wait and see if they moved, so in the meantime we ate a small snack and watch carefully the guards. Kyle was using his camera lens to check on the guards and he noticed they started to move towards us so he simple said "go!" And without thinking I just went back towards Jinshialing. I have to say this situation was scary and exciting and I had never walked so fast in my life! I say walk because I could not run since the steps were uneven and the path was really steep and long but nevertheless we made it back to Jingshialing before the guards could get to us and to our surprise we made the 1 hour hike to Simatai a 35 minute hike back to Jinshialing! This proves that when in a stressful and adrenalin increased situation you definitely make your heart beat and your body and muscles move faster. We arrived back to our tower and decided to have a warm breakfast, but there was a problem the fuel had been thrown away so I had to go through the garbage and get the fuel. Luckily, it was still early so not many tourists were on the Wall so the garbage was not too full actually I simply had to put my hand and grabbed the bag I had placed with the fuel in it. I took it out wiped my hands carefully and cooked the oatmeal. Having warm oatmeal for breakfast after that long and fast paced walk felt great and we got back our energy to take the last hike down a whole bunch of steps to the parking lot to catch a taxi to Miyun and get the bus 980 back to Beijing. As we ate breakfast the woman who had told Kyle tk go sleep at the tower near Simatai came by and said hello to us and chatted with us and tried to sell us some beer ( at 9:30 AM). We packed our backpacks again and headed down the steps to the parking lot. It took us about an hour to get down as the path was long and there were lots of steps and of course tourists walking up to the Wall. We got a lot of stares, "helloss" and "Lao wai" and a couple of "wow, hen hao and henzhou ( wow good and heavy) when they saw our backpacks. We got down and arrived to a kind of plaza with a big map of Jinshialing and a couple of vendors selling overpriced souvenirs and drinks. We bargain for some postcards and got the price down from 40 to 10 rmb. We bypassed a few harassing taxis and went to a coffee lounge with free wifi to book a cheap hotel in being for the night. It took us awhile because ctrip had not updated there prices in their website so we ended up making phone calls to ctrip and asking about a budget hotel near downtown we could not find any so. We settled for an airport express hotel for 200 rmb ( 33$) the night. When we were ready to leave we decided to talk to a few taxis that had harassed us before charging us a large amount f money to go to Miyun. Finally after a lot of hassles we found a taxi that took us to Miyun for 140 rmb ( $23) . The taxi ride was i eventful w e basically fell asleep and listened to music on our iPods. We reached Miyun and the bus station around noon and the bus 980 was ready to leave so we hurried trough some sort of cage lineup ( like a cattle cage) and got on the bus back to Beijing. We sat on a three person seat aisle backpacks stacked on top of each other and me jammed in the middle and Kyle in the aisle seat it was a smooth ride we slept and relaxed for the whole ride to DongZhimen station. We got there around 3 O clock and paid for he airport express train got on it and back to airport to take a taxi to the hotel. At the airport the taxi line was long a d our driver was a pissed off and grumpy man who did not speak English and did not know the address To our hotel. Finally after a long argument and hassles he started to drive to our hotel getting float and having to stop on several occasioned to ask for directions. We reached the hotel paid him the 28 rmb ( which he added 5 extra rmb for the sake of ripping us off) and checked in.

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