Strawberry Panda: The Great Wall Hike(Jinshanling to Simatai)

Day Seven: The Great Wall Hike. Today we got up at 7:00 a.m. and went to the Great Wall of China! The hike we went on was an average of 10 km. long. It took a bus ride, a taxi ride, a subway ride, and a cable car ride, just to get there! The cable car took forever. It was so slooooooooowwwwwwwwwww, I munched on some bread on the cable car. After we finally got to the “Great Wall” we started to walk and climb, up and down. A bunch of Chinese women told us they were farmers with no work. Two of them joined us through the hardest parts and tried to sell us souvenirs at the half way point. Mom gave them each 50 yuan for the help. The Great Wall is really gorgeous, but the only wildlife I saw were some bugs. The Great Wall is like most of the pictures I’ve seen to be honest, and really tough to climb at some places. As we walked, a tour group came from behind and passed us. Then a river split the Great Wall with a little swaying bridge connecting the ends. After crossing the bridge, we climbed a little bit more up the Great Wall, then we got to do a zipline over the river and had some ice cream. The zipline was interesting. They clipped us together and sent us down over the river. Down, down we went trying to hold all of our things together. Then because we crossed the river, we had to take a quick boat ride back over to the other side (with part of the tour group). After that it was back to a bus ride, a taxi ride, and a subway ride back to our hostel. And that was mostly what we did that day. Who, after all that walking, would want to do more?