Well, actually the night of the infinite garden wasn't over yet. After I arrived and everyone got together, we set out to accomplish another of our goals - Peking duck in Peking. So we set out to the nearby restaurant we were recommended.
The duck came in a duck.
Maybe there was a more proper technique, but we basically ended up making duck burritos.
Photographic evidence I bought my ticket! This became unfortunately important later.
The next day, we were headed to the other hostel so we could visit the Great Wall. We picked a less touristy, less renovated section. Both of those statements were quite understatements.
Apparently Chinese McDonald's sells vomit.
I could never read nor understand Chinese food, so I frequented the nearby Korean restaurant instead.
We arrived at the bus station which would be the beginning of our long and confusing journey. I ran into a Japanese person and talked him for a bit. He rode the bus with us for a while, but then realized he missed his stop or was on the wrong bus or something.
Technically, I was the best at reading Chinese, and somehow I was somewhat in charge of directions. A foolish mistake. We rode the bus for a while until someone hopped on the bus, spotted us, and tried to tell us something that seemed like he was saying this was our stop.
It wasn't.
However, I didn't know this and while I tried telling him I didn't think he was right, but since the driver wasn't saying anything and just let him on to talk at us, and he was so insistent, I eventually assumed he knew more than we did or maybe worked for the hostel or something. I told everyone that I thought we were supposed to get off there, and we all alighted.
Nope, he was just a taxi driver. And by "taxi driver", I mean he had a van. And not just him, but a fleet of other people with cars or vans, just camping by the bus station, trying to get people into their vehicles.
I continued to talk to him and the other "taxi drivers" to figure out where we were and how to get where we needed to go. I couldn't figure out if riding their taxi was the best way, but my friends were pretty adamant about not getting in and I eventually came to my senses and agreed, but yet couldn't bring myself to just ignore them or anything, so I kept talking to them. Eventually another of our bus came and we got on.
When we did reach our transfer station, we were immediately assailed by yet more "taxi"men. They would follow us for long periods of time, too. Or even hang out at the bus station with us. A lot of cars would drive past and slow down or even stop at the bus stop trying to get us to get in their cars. Most already had people in them. And yet they just sat there, waiting until a bus drove them off. Sometimes they'd get out or sometimes they'd just be people that walked over. They were just incredibly creepy, annoying, and persistent. We just stood there, hiding from the rain under the tiny roof until our bus came.
It was a long and boring bus ride and we couldn't move or sit for almost all of it. I had nothing better to do than to try (with great difficulty) to get a picture of the slightly amusing lederhosen-clad boy who got injured enough by the door to start bleeding.
I wasn't particularly successful.
I also took random pictures of the rest of the bus. Like this convenient card swipper. I never figured out what all the numbers were supposed to mean.
Bus hammers!
Never give up.
Eventually, we did get to sit.
And even buckle up!
Luckily, we were able to find where we needed to get dropped off. It was a very tiny, quiet town.
It had some decoration and stuff. We had to figure out how to get to the hostel, which is always a somewhat difficult task.
We could see the wall on the horizon.
Also corn.
The hostel was full of cats.
We were told we could touch the Wall from the hostel, but really we could just sit it on the next hill.
So many cats.
We set out to try to reach the Wall or something before it got dark. Like a scouting mission. We'd climb the Wall in the morning.
I don't know why, but I really liked the grass and the bricks and the whatever.
The area was quite rural with clearly very old buildings.
And animals. Angry animals.
Along the way, we found some really cute puppies.
They ended up following us for a while.
I eventually found a map of the area.
Apparently the village was supposed to be some kind of Communism experiment. I wonder how well it performed.
We ended up back at the bus stop from an alternate route.
We came across a wall, but probably not the the Wall.
And some kind of temple that was closed.
We walked on a little bit after that trying to find the Wall still.
DYI barbed wire.
Eventually the girls turned back for dinner, but the Swede and I went on ahead more since we thought it wasn't much farther.
The Chinese equivalent to where I lived.
We were coming up on the road the bus took us on again just on the other side of the tunnel.
Although one of the puppies turned back, one continued to follow from a distance. Whenever we passed people and it tried to go near them, they hissed at it for some reason. I didn't realize at the time, but the dogs were strays. My friend told me to stop petting it because it might follow us into the street and get hit by a car.
Sure enough, it did follow us across the road. Fortunately it didn't get hit.
It was interesting to see the hammer and sickle being casually used.
I had stopped at some point in the town when I saw some shirtless man just sitting at a fork in the road to try to ask him where the Wall was. I was looking for a particularly old section. I remembered most of the characters from the name and tried to write it. He eventually figured out what I was trying to write. Unfortunately, I figured out the town also had that name so that was probably where he led us with his directions.
More parks with free workout gear.
Well, it wasn't the Wall, but we found this bathroom. It's basically the same thing.
We saw the Wall in the distance. We weren't convinced it was the part we were looking for, but it was too far anyway. We decided to head back for dinner after exploring the immediate area.
More geese.
So we headed back, still puppy in tow.
More free workout gear.
Our puppy found a corgi.
We eventually got back, and I had to close the door to prevent the puppy from entering the hostel by closing the gate.
We had dinner with everyone and watched Ghost. One of the girls was very unhappy with our commentary as we watched the movie.
The hostel had some kind of water heater that required both turning the fuse on and then turning on. Like in the Karate Kid movie we tried watching at the hostel, but was too scratched to find out if Evil Kung-Fu won the day. I'm not sure why Chinese showers are like that, but it's still better than the Japanese not-working version.
At some point I ended up walking into the kitchen and found this convenient and simple what-goes-with-what chart.
With some rather strange combinations.
The next day we decided our paths. The girls wanted to take a shorter, easier path, but the Swede and I wanted to go on the difficult route. So we ended up splitting into two groups.
And so after being told our path with a rather crude map, we set out. Fortunately, the beginning was exactly where we were the evening before.
More dogs.
We managed to find an entrance to the path. It kind of matched the description, especially the part about stairs, but I think we were supposed to pay at some point, but we never found anything or anyone asking for money.
To protect himself from the sun, my friend brought an umbrella from the hostel.
The path was pretty not-a-pathy.
We found some kind of structure before we reached the Wall.
It was closed, and I wasn't sure if it was even ever used.
I never even figured out what it was for. It might have been where we were supposed to pay. Maybe.
Afterward, we could see the Wall up ahead.
The path was covered in a lot of small poop pellets. I just assumed there were like a billion rabbits somewhere. I tried avoiding stepping on them at first, but it became pretty impossible.
It wasn't much long after we finally reached the Wall.
It's hard for me to pick which photos I like best, so I'll keep a lot of the duplicates.
I finally decided to try out my panorama mode on my phone.
Even from the beginning of the Wall, you could easily see all the town. It was strange to think that this was once the border of China. Even though we had reached the start of the "path", the wall went in both directions. Except one of the directions was basically a cliff. I spend a lot of the hike trying to figure out how they managed to build these walls up on these cliffs.
Mysterious rock.
There was a path, but walking on the Wall was a lot more fun (and a lot more dangerous).
We were told that the path would be sparsely populated, but we were basically the only ones on the path the whole time until a group of three showed up. It appeared to be a couple and a guide. We were ahead of them and were faster than them so it was still almost like we were the only ones there.
The hills were pretty cool.
Ming Dynasty power lines.
Parts of the "path" were more forest than path.
Eventually (though rather quickly), the couple and their guide seemed to have turned back leaving us to be really the only ones on the path.
We found what I presume to be a strange shrine to some water god.
There was supposed to be a shortcut back, and we decided the path-looking thing on the other hill was supposed to meet up with our path and take us back.
The path just went up and up through several guardhouses.
We found another random shrine-like place.
I often spent too much time taking pictures and had to run to catch up with my friend.
Though apparently (at least for this photo), I got ahead of him.
There was the occasional climbing involved. (Probably mostly because we mostly walked on the Wall instead of on the path.)
Some of the buildings seemed to have at least some attempt to fix or at least delay their destruction.
I kept thinking we were almost at the end of the section, when I would get high enough to see it stretch on. It was a pretty tiring climb.
One of the guard towers still had roof access. The stairs were pretty super dangerous, but still functional.
I'm still not sure what the poles were for. I had the feeling they weren't original though.
They finally had some kind of protection to keep us from falling. There were a few times earlier on the path that I almost fell. Which would have been really really bad.
I thought I had already ran into the parts of the path I was warned about not being well-trimmed until I ran into this. The path was basically invisible.
We were finally in range of the last tower and could tell that it was actually the last tower.
We came across a part of the path even worse than the last - this part wasn't just invisible, but obstructed my view and even had thorn plants guarding all of it.
We finally reached a plateau and were in range of the last tower.
The last tower was in pretty rough shape.
Fortunately, we were able to confirm that it was, in fact, the last tower we could (safely) reach.
We managed to find a way up on top and took some more photos.
Having reached the end, we turned back. By this point, we were very hot and tired. I had long ago drank the last of my water. And my foot had begun to hurt. Going down was probably the least fun part.
At some point on the climb down I accidentally knocked over a somewhat large stone in the direction of my friend. Fortunately, it missed him...
Aside from potentially severely injuring my friend, nothing particularly eventful happened on the way down until the first tower.
Apparently all the poo pellets had been sheep. A whole ton of them were gathered in the first tower.
My friend tried to get close and I tried to record his imminent demise.
Unfortunately, no stampede happened and then we finished walking back.
My feet were quite unhappy with me by the time we got back, but we made it eventually.
We had to head back same day, so having met up with the girls, we set out to the bus stop.
We had to wait in that all-too-familiar place again.
This time we had seats.
Someone stole a bus hammer! I wish it were me...
Then the second bus.
Complete with another bus hammer!
Fancy electronic street signs!
I felt very satisfied with our Wall trip. I might go back and visit the renovated section, but I think I will pick a much cooler month or pack more water.
Or maybe a Segway.
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