Zoe woke up feeling
sick when the alarm went off at 6am this morning - her insides had
pretty much turned to liquid. In other circumstances, we would
probably have cancelled our plans for the day, but this was our one
chance to see the Great Wall, so we did our best to empty her out and
then headed for the metro (please don't judge us!). As we crossed the
street, Zoe said she felt unwell, and when we reached the other side,
she was sick on the pavement. Kate said she would take her back to
the hotel And then Zoe was sick again. Kate was adamant now that the
two of them should go back, but Zoe insisted that she would be okay,
so we bought our tickets and headed down into the subway.
We didn't have very
far to go and were soon walking to the bus station. One of the
helpful staff in our hostel had written down some details of where we
wanted to go in Chinese characters for us. At the exit to the metro
station, some uniformed women waited to give directions for the buses
and when we showed our piece of paper to one of these women, she
gathered us up and took us into the terminal. She didn't really speak
English (very few of the people we met in China do) but she made it
known to us that the bus we had planned to take was very slow – a
stopping bus that would take two hours to get to our destination. She
ushered us onto a different bus that she said would only take an
hour. With no real idea ourselves, we surrendered to her
ministrations and were soon on our way. Sadly, her one hour estimate
was 'under normal circumstances', as they say - not when there had
been a nasty accident on the freeway, which took us at least an hour
to crawl past (during which time poor old Zoe brought up a bit more
bile into a plastic bag).
It was about 10am by
the time we made it to the town we were heading for – which Kate
and I had assumed would be some sort of dusty outpost but was
actually an enormous, shiny city. We didn't really know where to get
off the bus – and at every stop, touts would jump on and loudly
inform us that this was where we were supposed to be getting
off – but get off we finally did, to be greeted by more touts
quoting prices for getting us to the wall itself. Those prices seemed
too high and none of the touts spoke much English, but Kate
eventually settled on a nice, friendly middle-aged man (the least
insistent of the people crowding around her) and we settled on a
price and hopped into his car for the hour-long drive to Mutianyu.
The wall itself is, of course, very long and much of it is in a state
of extreme disrepair. We had hoped to visit one of these sections of
'wild wall' as we thought they would be more photogenic and less
crowded, but they were of course more difficult to get to and we were
a bit worried about taking the girls onto them as they were reputed
to be quite dangerous (indeed, we later met some people who had done
so and they said they had feared for their safety and had really
struggled to get around). Instead, we opted to visit a section that
was more developed, with a big visitor centre and good access to a
big section of restored wall.
By the time we got
there, Zoe had perked up a bit, and did a bit more when we bought her
something to eat at Burger King. By then we had bought our tickets –
we opted to get a chairlift up, rather than walking and to take a
rather novel method for getting back down, more of which later. The
wall itself was as impressive as we had hoped – a crenellated grey
ribbon clinging to a jagged ridgeline, steep mountainsides falling
away on each side. The chairlift deposited us close to one end of the
restored section and we chose to walk towards that end. The stairs
were steep and the sun pretty hot (although there was a lovely cool
breeze), so Kate and Zoe stopped beside one of the watchtowers while
Sarah and I continued on – up a particularly steep section. We
passed numerous puffing and panting tourists – although,
mercifully, not that many, as again we're visiting out of season –
and eventually made it to the last watchtower, beyond which the wall
hasn't been restored, the walkways choked with vegetation and the
brickwork crumbling away. The watchtower is at a crossroad, and in
one direction it was possible to walk out onto the unrestored wall
(past a sign bearing a prohibition to do so). Sarah wanted a rest, so
I left her in the cool shade of the watchtower and headed out along
the wall, eventually reaching a delapidated watchtower where a few
other tourists were taking in the pretty spectacular view.
Backtracking,
I picked up Sarah (who had had to pose for a few more photos while I
was gone) and then Kate and Zoe, and we made our way back. It was now
time to descend back to the visitors centre, a prospect that had the
girls particularly excited. One of the reasons that we had chosen to
visit this section of the wall was that it was possible to get back
down via a toboggan – riding little carts down a metal track (just
like the one at Jindabyne but quite a bit longer). I went first so
that I could feed my need for speed, but sadly, there were attendants
stationed at regular intervals exhorting you to slow down, a practice
that became redundant when I caught up with a group of women going
down at a snail's pace.
At
the bottom we met up with our driver and drove back to town, where he
put us on the bus back to Beijing. There we showered, rested, and
then headed out for dinner. We had planned to go back to the place
where we first ate, but it was heaving, so we looked around for
somewhere to get a beer and play cards while we waited for a table to
become free. Our first choice was the little Western-style cafe next
door to our hotel, but when Kate enquired about the prices, they
quoted her 60 yuan (£6) for a standard 330ml bottle. Ha! After a lot
of wandering around, we ended up sitting on tiny stools out the front
of another restaurant down the street, where we got 600ml bottles for
6 yuan. We quickly became an object of fascination for the restaurant
staff and had to interrupt our card game for an impromptu photo
session (that quickly involved a few passersby as well).
A
bit later, the guy from the restaurant called over that our table was
ready and we enjoyed another incredible meal – pork, beef, duck (complete with head),
veges and fried rice, soft drinks and another beer for the equivalent
of about £14.
No comments:
Post a Comment