The Great Wall

To start off I want to say that this blog may be long because it is really hard to choose which pictures to show you. So while we were in Beijing, we had the opportunity to take a tour to The Great Wall. We have now officially been to Beijing. There is a Chinese saying that says, "You have not been to Beijing unless you have been to The Great Wall." I can tell you from experience that The Great Wall is truly great, grand and magnificent.

Before we left, we had decided that we wanted to go see The Great Wall. I looked on the internet about some of the spots to see and how to get there. I found a tour company that offered personal tours of non-public areas of The Great Wall. It was a little bit expensive, but we decided to go ahead and do it anyway. When we got to Beijing, other tour companies tried to get us to change our tour. However, they wanted us to sit through a tea ceremony and see a silk museum. These are sales pitches to get us to buy tea and silk sheets. We have been to them already and they are annoying. We decided to stick with the original tour company and we are so glad we did. No sales pitches and the tour was four people; Gary and I, a young man from Bermuda and our tour guide.

We were picked up at our hotel around 7:30 am and then went to pick up the young man. After we finally picked him up, we headed to The Great Wall. The drive was about two and a half hours. It went by very quickly. We drove through some beautiful mountains. The area we ended up was in the middle of the mountains near a small village.

 APEC was an economic summit that took place in China in 2014.

This was the beginning of our hike. The sign says that this trail is closed to the public. The tour group we went through are the only ones who can take people this way. Pretty amazing.

These two pictures are of the little town where we start the hike.

The hike was lovely, but sometimes hard. I almost passed out in the beginning because I had not eaten enough. Once Gary gave me enough to eat, I was fine. Once I felt better, the hike was amazing and I was able to enjoy it more fully. What an incredible hike it was. What was even more amazing was that we did not see anyone else along the first three quarters of our hike. The only person we saw was the person at a spot where there was a ladder. We had to pay 5 yuan each to go up the ladder and continue on the tour. The tour guide paid this because we had already paid him. Other than that we saw no one else while we were hiking the undeveloped area of The Great Wall. We saw a few more people once we got to the reconstructed part of The Great Wall. Normally this area is very crowded, but the day we went there was hardly any people.

We were also blessed to have a clear day with very little pollution. From the top of the wall, we were able to clearly see Beijing. Normally you cannot do this. When I think of that day, I am so grateful to the Lord that we had the perfect day to see The Great Wall.

 

Myself, our tour guide (standing up) and our new friend from Bermuda.

 

The view from the top. Isn't it spectacular!

You can see the top part of one of the ladders we had to climb up to continue. I was so proud of myself. I had always had a problem with heights, but I think much of that fear has left me because I did not have a problem with the ladders or walking along some of the cliffs.

This is where the redeveloped part of the wall begins. As you can see, there was not many people on the wall the day we were there and you can see the blue sky in the background.

Look at these steep steps. There were many of these. Gary and I both found that the early undeveloped part of the wall was easier to climb than this part. Still all the parts were beautiful.

We took the tram down because the young man from Bermuda's knee was really bothering him. He would not be able to walk down. They also have an Alpine slide to get you down. I think next time we will take that.

Our fun little group!