The trip to China was topped off by the obligatory trip to the Great Wall. But instead of going to the regular haunts which are always crawling with tourists we decided to do an Xtreme sports hike route. After a two and half journey on a bus which had no suspension at all we arrived at Simatai.
After equipping ourselves like mountaineers (mostly with lots of bottled water) we headed off on a 4 hour, winding, knee-busting, acl surgery justifying, up and down hike along the crumbling remains of China's Great Wall.
Along the way, we picked up our dedicated marketing consultants. These were local entrepreneurs that would walk alongside you trying to sell u everything in the book. (water,food,postcards as well as the book too). In something that looked straight out of the Discovery channel's wildlife shows, a pack of them descended on us and after an initial sniffing around period , paired off with each one of us as if picking out prey. Then they proceeded to join us on every step on our hike even helping us climb stuff every now and then and fanning us when we rested. Now this kinda beat the point of coming all the way out here to get away from the crowd so we were all a little annoyed. We tested them(by refusing to buy anything and focusing on our hike) to see how long they came with us but what we didn't count on was the classic pincer pattern they were running. Just when you thought you had outwalked your stalker, you would suddenly see someone new ahead waiting for you. A significant portion into the hike on the wall they had colleagues waiting to tag off and who just took over where they left off. I work in Marketing and that is what I call making a sale. Who says communists don't like capitalism.
Anyways it turns out we needed them to replenish our water suppply and buy cheap postcards from so it was all good. About an hour into it they left us alone once a sale was made.
We kept truding on, finally alone, up and down thousands of stairs, winding along the hills and valleys, imagining what it must have been for the empires soldiers running up and down the walls with equipment. After a short lunch comprised of throat burning english mustard sandwiches with wet bread we continued on taking some nice pictures along the way. At the end of the hike, we were faced with a choice, you could walk down another 15 minutes or brave
the zip line they had set up that dropped a good 500ft to the bottom. Some of the crazier ones amongst us tried it and it was blast. Though strapping on to a small rusting metal ring, in the pouring rain, 500 ft above a drop to my death, run by a kid, did make me think that this definitely ain't Epcot Center. Drenched by a rainstorm at the end we made our trip back to our air suspension bus and the long trip back to the hotel.
