The Great Wall at Simitai

Before leaving Beijing we had to make a proper visit to the Great Wall. Driving for a little over two hours brought us to a popular hiking portion of the wall. With Simatai as our final destination, we hiked past thirty towers, along bricks and stones, some ancient and some newly placed. The wall at Simatai is roughly 1500 years old! Much of it was rebuilt more recently - but there is still plenty of the original wall to hint at it's wise old age.
We made quick work of the hike, barreling through in about three hours. We got a bit fuddled up in the beginning, Ying stayed back to help with a badly swollen ankle, and Edwin had to play catch up with us for the rest of the day, only to finally catch us at the very end. Brooke and I had a small adventure trying to talk our way past a guard when we turned back to find Edwin. Because we had a group ticket, which was with Edwin, there was nothing we could show to the guard to prove that we hadn't sneaked onto the wall. And speaking a grand total of about twenty words in Chinese, we were hard pressed to explain our situation. Eventually, and miraculously, we flailed our arms in just the right way, and the guard seemed to understand. We didn't find Edwin, but we found Ying's cousin, who also spoke only Chinese. More hand waving ensued and we deduced that Edwin, Megan and Steven had taken a shortcut - avoiding a significant part of the wall. So we kept on truckin'.
The hike was amazing, I only wish I had budgeted my time better to spend some time relaxing on the wall and taking in the scenery.
Getting into Simatai proper from the wall involved a zip line that I couldn't turn down. I think that all but three of us ended up on the zip line. Yeah, it's sort of cheezy, but worth it!