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Read Day 1
Read Day 2
Read Day 3
Read Day 4
Day 5
Our final day began with us waking at 6am to catch a mini-bus with about ten other people at the hostel. You see, for the price of about 15 dollars, they'd take us to the wall, and back again. That's a good price considering Mutianyu was over an hour away. We drove through the city and out into the countryside. After living in Japan for so long, I felt that everything in China was so spread out in comparison. I was exhausted though so the trip passed in a bit of a haze. Once we got there, we had to hang around for a half hour or so (a blatant attempt to get us to buy souvenirs and food from the shop there) before the wall officially opened up and we were allowed to head up. We all chose to hike the path up to the wall rather than take the gondola, and I quickly learnt that all the walking from the previous days was catching up on me. Eventually we made it to the actual wall. Only a few people were ahead of us and they'd largely disappeared so we had the place to ourselves. We got lots of pictures of the wall without people on it, so my only regret is that it was so smoggy. We had a lot of fun taking pics while standing on the top walls of a guard tower (Sauron-chan climbed as well.) I was surprised to see how small the cannons were. Entertaining to watch was also the poor martial arts group who were forced by their teacher to run all the way up the wall then down again.
The thing you quickly noticed was that the wall was insanely steep with steps of varying length, width and height to break up the monotony and give your knees and legs a really good work out. Unfortunately, I had smashed up one of my knee ligaments quite badly about five months before, and while I thought it had healed enough to bear the trip, the steepness (and the several kilometres we climbed) caught up with me. I had already been close to limping before Nish suggested we climb up the right side of the wall right to the end, but gamely decided to give it a go. I regretted it when I realized I was nearly climbing vertically at times to get up those steps. See? Here we are at the top. My grin is because I'm allowed to rest. The view of the further off, unrepaired sections of the wall was probably worth seeing at least. I walked very slowly down those steep steps, feeling the agony growing with each movement but thinking I could make it down. Unfortunately, by the time we reached the middle of the wall, my knees actually gave out on me and it took me ten minutes to climb down only one short flight of steps since my knees were trembling so badly and would give out every once and awhile. I told Nish there was no way I'd make it down to the parking lot on foot, so we decided to take the toboggan which wound down the side of the steep hill. It was awesome, if horribly historically inaccurate (the archaeologist inside me disapproves, the ten year old thinks it was ace). We avoided the pushy sellers and people dressed as Mongols at the bottom of the hill. We finally got home and the long bus ride, plus an hour's rest at the hostel allowed my legs to recharge enough to survive a short walk to the shopping area where we picked up last minute gifts (I was down to my last ten dollars, which stretches pretty far in China, but still). Then we caught a taxi to the airport and headed back to Japan. I don't remember much of the flight only being exhausted, happy to see Fukuoka airport, but annoyed that there was still a long train ride for us to get home. We made it though, and you can check the day 1 report to see the results. Ja ne!
Read Day 2
Read Day 3
Read Day 4
Day 5
Our final day began with us waking at 6am to catch a mini-bus with about ten other people at the hostel. You see, for the price of about 15 dollars, they'd take us to the wall, and back again. That's a good price considering Mutianyu was over an hour away. We drove through the city and out into the countryside. After living in Japan for so long, I felt that everything in China was so spread out in comparison. I was exhausted though so the trip passed in a bit of a haze. Once we got there, we had to hang around for a half hour or so (a blatant attempt to get us to buy souvenirs and food from the shop there) before the wall officially opened up and we were allowed to head up. We all chose to hike the path up to the wall rather than take the gondola, and I quickly learnt that all the walking from the previous days was catching up on me. Eventually we made it to the actual wall. Only a few people were ahead of us and they'd largely disappeared so we had the place to ourselves. We got lots of pictures of the wall without people on it, so my only regret is that it was so smoggy. We had a lot of fun taking pics while standing on the top walls of a guard tower (Sauron-chan climbed as well.) I was surprised to see how small the cannons were. Entertaining to watch was also the poor martial arts group who were forced by their teacher to run all the way up the wall then down again.
The thing you quickly noticed was that the wall was insanely steep with steps of varying length, width and height to break up the monotony and give your knees and legs a really good work out. Unfortunately, I had smashed up one of my knee ligaments quite badly about five months before, and while I thought it had healed enough to bear the trip, the steepness (and the several kilometres we climbed) caught up with me. I had already been close to limping before Nish suggested we climb up the right side of the wall right to the end, but gamely decided to give it a go. I regretted it when I realized I was nearly climbing vertically at times to get up those steps. See? Here we are at the top. My grin is because I'm allowed to rest. The view of the further off, unrepaired sections of the wall was probably worth seeing at least. I walked very slowly down those steep steps, feeling the agony growing with each movement but thinking I could make it down. Unfortunately, by the time we reached the middle of the wall, my knees actually gave out on me and it took me ten minutes to climb down only one short flight of steps since my knees were trembling so badly and would give out every once and awhile. I told Nish there was no way I'd make it down to the parking lot on foot, so we decided to take the toboggan which wound down the side of the steep hill. It was awesome, if horribly historically inaccurate (the archaeologist inside me disapproves, the ten year old thinks it was ace). We avoided the pushy sellers and people dressed as Mongols at the bottom of the hill. We finally got home and the long bus ride, plus an hour's rest at the hostel allowed my legs to recharge enough to survive a short walk to the shopping area where we picked up last minute gifts (I was down to my last ten dollars, which stretches pretty far in China, but still). Then we caught a taxi to the airport and headed back to Japan. I don't remember much of the flight only being exhausted, happy to see Fukuoka airport, but annoyed that there was still a long train ride for us to get home. We made it though, and you can check the day 1 report to see the results. Ja ne!
