Xizhazi

Call off the search party. I made it to the village I'm going to start my hike from and found a guesthouse to kip for the night.

I'll take this blog back to when I got to Huairou. I managed not to get scammed on the bus and got off the right stop. As soon as the door opened I was immediately surrounded by taxi drivers wanting to take me to the Great Wall. Taxi meters aren't used around here so you have to negotiate the price which is always interesting when both parties don't understand each other.

Anyway I spoke to one guy and he started off at 200 yuan. I knew 100 was probably right so I said 50. He had no idea what I was saying but the clever man pulled out a notepad and pen and I wrote down my offer. His response was dollars? I said no, yuan and was met with a loud laugh. He came back to 200. I said no way but knew 50 was too low so wrote down 100 again it was a straight now and he still stuck to 200. I didn't want to go any higher until he came back with an improved offer. So we went back and forth, neither of us budging. By this time we've gathered a crowd. There was one women who new a little English and was being annoying saying that 200 was a good offer. I then decided to walk and he offered 180. Still not good enough but I was happy to go 150 max so I wrote it down. He said no so I walked. He then calls me back and accepts much to this women's displeasure. Oh if only I could have taken a picture of this women's screwed up face. In hindsight 150 was probably too much. But we're talking pounds here. I wasn't going to lose any sleep.

So I got in a taxi and sent my coordinates for Bill to kick arse in case the worse should happen. But all was fine and it was an amazing drive to the village. It was very scenic driving through the mountainous region and the little villages along the way. It was raining so we drove through the clouds. It got a little scary as we were getting towards the village. Visibility dropped and the road got narrower. A wrong move by the taxi driver and we would have gone off the edge. Thankfully we made it in one piece. 150 didn't seem to bad now.

We got to the gates of the village where I needed to pay to enter so this was as far as the taxi would take me. I was fortunate enough that there was a lady at the gates who owned a guesthouse. I was actually looking for a different guesthouse which I read about online but out of pure convenience and not to look rude I took her up on her offer. The room was basic but all I needed was a place to sleep for the night. This lady didn't speak a word of English but there were some other Chinese people staying at the guesthouse and one knew a few words of English and welcomed me. She told me she had been to London and we started reeling off every famous landmark we knew. Standard. After we exhausted our limited knowledge of landmarks she said what I was doing was really dangerous as it had been raining for 2 days. Ah great, as if I wasn't nervous already. So I unpacked, but I was starving and also needed to get some supplies for the next day. This women that spoke a bit of English was no where to be seen. Damn! Before I left the UK I downloaded a translator and lucky for me there was a girl working in the restaurant who had the Chinese equivalent of the app. So we pretty much communicated in text and it worked better than I could ever have imagined. I found out there were no shops near the village so no chance of getting supplies for the hike but I did eat at the restaurant and the girl said she would make me breakfast in the morning and some snacks for the road. The only drawback was it wouldn't be ready until 7 and I wanted to leave at 5 to reach the tower in time for sunrise. So I went to bed with the intention of leaving on an empty stomach at 5 but as you'll read in my next blog that wasn't the case.Read more