Beijing - Day Two

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We woke up bright and early Friday morning to make our way to the bus stop in order to catch the bus that would take us out of Beijing to the stop that Mr. Chen, the owner of the farm family hostel we were staying at, would pick us up from. This was my first time trying to catch a bus in China, and unfortunately not the last. Getting on a bus here was one of the worst experiences with public transportation I have had anywhere - people don't make any lines, they shove, they scream, and getting in is a battle just to get past the twenty people who decided that they were too good for the line and didn't need to wait in it.

At least getting picked up at the station was easy enough, and Mr. Chen found us with no trouble and we drove with him and his wife to the hostel, situated out in a small village surrounded by parts of the Great Wall. The room was nice, though the bathroom was a completely different issue, and it was quiet because we were the only ones there. You could see the Wall from our windows. We had some time to kill, which was relaxing after dealing with people in Beijing, and then we had an extremely delicious home cooked lunch. So yummy!

Then we rested a bit before we headed out to the Wall itself. The hostel advertised a guide for the wall, along with three different courses broken down by difficulty. We chose the middle course, called Hunchback Curve, which was still physically demanding but had great views. It got to about 93 degrees, so we got a lot of water and then Mr. Chen drove us and we picked up our guide, a 70-year-old Chinese man who didn't speak any English.

We were all dropped off at the end of a country road that led into basically a wild brush, and as our guide started trekking through it, I figured either this was the least touristy section of the Great Wall ever, or we were going to be killed and our organs sold on the black market. Fortunately for us, it was the former.

Our strange and completely unpopulated path led us up to a very old and completely unrenovated part of the wall. When I say old, I mean we were climbing remnants of stone on all fours on a lot of it, and going through and around old guard towers that were in some sections completely heaps of rubble. This was super hard work given how hot it was, but also COMPLETELY awesome. We were ALONE on the Great Wall. Our guide occasionally attempted to speak to us in Chinese, but spent most of the time humming, whistling, and singing Chinese folk tunes. We eventually got to a section that was slightly more preserved, in that you could actually see some steps and curves, and the views were completely breathtaking. Instead of a highly visited and crowded tourist spot, we were hiking a completely deserted and unmodernized part of this amazing historical structure. Absolutely fantastic!! The pictures don't do it justice at all, but it was without a doubt one of the coolest things I've ever done.

We finally made it to the end and had to hike back down through the thicket to the road, where our guide bid us a strange farewell and we were left on our own to get back to our hostel on the village road. Luckily it wasn't too far and we remembered some of the buildings. We were fifteen shades of exhausted, and completely gross and sweaty, and when we got back we both kind of just collapsed until Mrs. Chen came to get us for dinner. It was again the most delicious meal ever - tons of food and we ordered beer to celebrate having hiked the Great Wall!

As I mentioned earlier, the only downside to staying on the Chen's farm was the bathroom - which was really just a hole in the ground with no plumbing. After squatting, which I am getting better at due to sometimes having to use the same style toilet in Japan, you can't put the toilet paper in the hole and instead put it in the waste basket. Then we had to pour some water from a nearby bucket to wash it out a bit. This would have been one thing on its own, but this room also doubled as our shower, which meant we were standing over the toilet hole in order to get clean. WHHHHYYYY lol. That was an experience.

Right as we were heading to bed, the other people staying at the farm showed up - a girl traveling solo from San Francisco and a Chinese family from near Beijing. I talked with both of them, and Mrs. Chen talked to us through her cell phone, which translated her Chinese input into English. I managed to explain to her that my birthday was in two weeks using written kanji, since they are the same in Japanese, and she told me what I believe the Chinese equivalent of what happy birthday is and then also complimented my kanji writing skills. Lol

Bed time and a massive crash for us!

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