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Saturday morning, we all (me, Fernanda, Jeff and Dave) awoke bright and early to meet up with our tour guides, Fred and Heidi (a Belgian man and Chinese woman with a very hippie attitude on life). We were going camping on the Great Wall!!!
We had a group of 9 people – the four of us plus a family of 4 and a German man in China briefly for a business trip. We hopped on the bus and made the 2-hour drive up to the Great Wall area. Our first stop was a farmhouse for lunch. The couple running the place were really friendly and served up AMAZING food. They also were keen to share their knowledge of traditional healing. One thing we all did was put mint leaves on our foreheads – a great way to stay cool! Considering we decided to go hiking on a day when temperatures were hitting the mid-to-high-30s, any way to stay cool is a good plan!
After lunch and digestion time (anyone for a nap?) we packed up our bags and set off for the Great Wall! We hiked up a very steep hill just to get to
the wall. At that point, one member of our group decided she couldn’t go on and decided to go back down to the farmhouse for the night. The 8 of us plus our tour guides then trekked on up the wall – climbing some epicly steep steps! This was the first time I didn’t feel too tall for China.
Now for those of you wondering, we were MILES from the “touristy” part of the wall. Most people go to a very crowded, fancily restored part of the wall where you can stroll along flat and maintained pathways. But that, quite frankly, is boring. Where we were was technically not open to the public but it was totally deserted so we could just sneak up onto the wall anyways.
We hiked for hours up the wall, taking the time to enjoy the amazing vistas of the wall winding up and down the neighbouring hills. Finally we reached our destination – a guard tower where we would set up camp for the night. The views from this tower were just amazing. The pictures really tell the better story. I spent much of the evening just sitting
and looking because that provided ample entertainment!
Fred and Heidi are amazing hosts. I DEFINITELY recommend Dandelion Tours to anyone looking for an exciting Great Wall experience. They brought an epic spread of food and we had a BBQ feast for dinner. There was cream cheese! And avocado! And tomato! I basically need nothing else in life. I made sandwhiches where I just crammed as many different things as possible between two slices of bread to create a flavour explosion in my mouth. Peanut butter, cream cheese, duck, egg, tomato, avocado, lettuce…oh man, it was delicious…
We set up our tents atop the guard tower. It was so warm we could leave the fly off and sleep under the stars. We definitely needed the mosquito netting because the bugs were abundant and LOUD! It wasn’t the most comfortable sleep – even with an air mattress – but it was worth it. I awoke to the sunrise outside our tent. I was too tired to get up and move but you’ll just have to take my word for the fact that it was gorgeous. When I did finally get up the views were stunning though
Lunch begins
emphasis on "begins" cause this is a small fraction of the food we got!not as clear as the day before.
Oh and of course I woke up JULY 1
ST which means I got to celebrate Canada Day from the Great Wall of China! I brought my flag up and took all sorts of photos. It was a pretty Canadian place to be, I think, in a tent!
We took a different route back down the mountain. Instead of hiking back down the stairs, we went down the incredibly steep mountain through the woods. There was much slipping and sliding. I decided, rather than risk falling, to just bum slide down much of the hill which made for much fun. Aside from the weird horsefly/bee hybrid bugs (there’s a China/Panem Hunger Games reference here involving mutant insects…) that kept biting us, it was pretty damn awesome. And we didn’t get lost! Somehow! We finally came to a cave with a couple Buddhas in it so we knew we were on the main path again. The end of the hike was pretty easy but it was several hours I think of bum sliding. Woo!
We met up with our bus in a village and we all
drank TONS of water because, of course, you can never pack enough water. Especially not in that heat! We then boarded the bus, smelly and muddy, and headed back to Beijing!
Back in Beijing, Dave headed off to quickly see the Forbidden City before catching his train back to Shanghai. Fernanda, Jeff and I hopped on a subway and made our way back home. Oh, did we get stared at. So hard. Fernanda and I even had our picture taken with a girl. I could NEVER imagine a Chinese girl daring to look (and smell!) the way did in public. We laughed the whole train ride.
Back at the hotel, I quickly showered and met up with Jeff and the two Zac’s from UCLA (yes, they’re both named Zac and they both go to UCLA. The first arrived basically when I got back to Beijing from my work trip and the second had only just arrived on Canada Day). They had all agreed to celebrate Canada Day with me! We went out to a really nice restaurant which was doing all-you-can-eat maple syrup-glazed ribs plus Canadian beer at decent prices. It was REALLY FUN
and the food was REALLY, REALLY GOOD! They played Canadian music and even had on the Canada-US gold medal hockey game from Vancouver 2010 haha. The owners of the restaurant are Canadian but they had this American intern from North Carolina running the event. I made some music requests and complained about the Nickelback which he says he included “for jokes”. You put Justin Bieber for jokes! At least his music is good!
Anyways it was a classy and fun way to celebrate the birthday of the best country in the world. Of course, since I had only Americans to drag along, they didn’t last too long at such a Canadian event. The Zac’s have become fans of the Beijing soccer team and were quite adament that we catch the game against Guangzhou. So once the all-you-can-eat ended at 8pm, we went off in search of a more Chinese place to watch the game. We found a tiny restaurant showing the game and stopped in to join the random fans. It was pretty fun though Beijing lost! BOO!!!!
On the way to the subway, Zac 1 and I had some McFlurry’s - my first
time having McDonald’s in China! We got the flavour they gave us cause we didn’t know how to say different flavours. It was Oreo so all good.
All in all an excellent Canada Day! Happy Birthday once again to my home and native land!!! I miss you!!!!
-Dafne
PS more pics from the hike on the company website:
http://china-hiking.smugmug.com/Other/jian-kou-great-wall/23915300_PWrGKN#!i=1940049095&k=tWDmFvp In case, for some reason, the 148 pictures I uploaded weren't enough...
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Leslie
non-member comment
Glorious Photos
Fantastic photos and perspective of a little-seen portion of the Great Wall. The climb up and down looks difficult and hazardous. Climbing skills and no fear of heights must be necessary - congratulations on making it!