Beijing, 8 April 2003

The Chinese Wall! At last!!! We got onto the bus (way too early to my liking) and walked from Jinshanling to Simatai.

Yes! On the Wall at last. Now I took a lot of photos so most of these actually won't have much comment on it. The photo should say enough anyway.

Vincent was v happy 2 b on the Wall.

A typical Chinese country toilet.

We were about to walk to entire visible distance...

I had climbed these stairs and was still full of energy. I was ready for the next 9.5 kms... ahum ahum

I needed a rest, I was completely dying! But I was having a great time and walking on the Chinese Wall is always fab.

These were the ppl that helped me climb this thing w/o completely dying. Well, the woman mainly. This is when we bought stuff off them for whatever price they wanted as a thank you for their help.

View from the Wall. Imagine walking there in cold winter like the barbarians did when they attacked China!

From now it all went mainly downhill. I was extremely happy about that.

Another view of the landscape.

Going down...

As the Wall was not restored here, we had to use the path on the side to continue our hike.

Obviously v relieved.

Luckily this only went down as well...

This is what we would have had to climb it would b still intact.

Vincent was still in quite a good condition and barely out of breath. Grmph. But @ least he was having a good time. Smile!

This is Simatai from a distance. The more restored part of this area.

The Wall is full of surprises... There was actually a back road to get into/out of this tower. Not to worry, I didn't have to jump out of it!

Plus the stairs were really steep. Once again I was v happy I only had to walk these down, not climb them up. :o)

After we had entered Simatai, we had to buy a ticket to cross the bridge. Yep, they make money out of everything here... Anyway, the bridge was v nice and not @ all like Indiana Jones, although the Aussie guy made it seem that way.

We had a great view over this river...

Here you can c the Wall disappear into the River.

The river just seemed to end right there. U couldn't c it continue at all... Later I found out there was a small and steep waterfall @ the end.

The bridge again, taken from the other side of Simatai. C here where we had just come from...

Once again a view of the Great Wall into the direction of Jinshanling.

One last look at the Wall as the clouds were gathering and it was turning colder.

And the view from the other side, Simatai.

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