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| Mutianyu Section of the Great Wall of China |
Mao once said "If you haven't been to the Great Wall, you have not been a real man." How true that is could be debated until the end of the earth, but at the end of the day there is one thing that everyone with a brain should agree on, and that is that the Great Wall of China is incredible! We visited the Mutianyu 慕田峪 section, and we were absolutely amazed at how big it was, and we could probably only see two miles of it, and supposedly it goes on for thousands and thousands of miles! This was probably the one part of our Chinese adventure that we were looking forward to the most, and finally it was here.
We had choices as to how to climb and descend the wall. Some people in our group hiked up to it (bear in mind that it is on the top of the mountains), some decided to take a cable car, but we opted to take the chair lift (aka. Ski lift) to the top of the mountain. Great choice number one of the day!
We were like giddy school children for the whole five-minute
ride, and we were amazed at the views. The wall got closer and closer,
until we finally arrived at the Great Wall of China! Wow, it was amazing. It
just seemed to go on and on forever, snaking it’s way through the mountains. It
is huge! We were so happy to be there, and kept thinking, “We are on the Great Wall
of China, this is amazing!” Laleinia especially was so happy, almost to the point of tears!
Well to our
surprise, the whole section that we hiked (and it was quite a long way)
was pretty much all stairs. We should have counted how many, but definitely in
the thousands, maybe tens of thousands, who knows. But most of it was so steep. Thank goodness the wall is not in the USA or the
UK, because there is no way they’d let you risk your life over there for a
wall. Honestly, some parts were so steep that we almost thought we would fall
off! And only one small section had a handrail. It amazed us to think of how in
the world they built it, and where all the bricks came from to make it. Humans
can really do some impressive things!
Laleinia’s fear has always been stairs, so this was the
ultimate test for her, as her tears of joy almost turned to tears of fear. Alastair was so proud of her though, as she just got on with things and
did her best to enjoy herself, and was like a pro at navigating her way up and
down the great wall and it’s perilous stairs! Switchbacks and grabbing Alastair's bag made the difference! We both really enjoyed ourselves,
and shared a little (big) kiss at one of the towers.
Now if getting up to the wall was amazing, getting down was
just a load of fun! We took the toboggan all the way down, and it was great!
None of us had been on a toboggan before, so this was quite the
initiation! Alastair went first, and of course had to ignore the two rules that the
toboggan guys kept telling us, no cameras and no speeding! Luckily the
two rules were broken together, and a high speed crash was caught on video!
Here is a section from Alastair's journal: "I was flying down the
track, hitting the corners with speed and coming out of the turns even faster,
holding my camera in front of me the whole time. Well at one turn the toboggan
just flipped me off! I got a friction burn or whatever you call it on my left
knee and also on my elbow! It hurt! It was really funny though. The Chinese guy sitting on the corner that I had just flown round stood up, pointed at me, and just started laughing. I got back on my Toboggan and got out of there as fast as I could."
After the Great Wall of China, we went to some Jade factory which was interesting, and also to the Ming Tombs, well, just the walkway towards them that was lined with statue things. It was kind of cool, quite a peaceful walk where we took a lot of pictures, but since it was coming on the back of a trip to one of the World's coolest places, it just wasn't what it could have been on it's own. All in all, this had to be one of the best days of our married lives, if not our whole lives. Everyone needs to go to the Great Wall of China!