I recently went to my post-baby medical appointment and was really looking forward to getting clearance to work out (at least officially - I’d already gone running twice and nothing seemed too broken). I was happy to hear my, using Isla’s terminology, “Lady Gaga” had healed up nicely, but was warned that my abdominal muscles were actually torn and I needed to start physical therapy as soon as possible.
I’d so very much been looking forward to finally doing some of the amazing hiking around Hong Kong and figured that I didn’t need my abs intact too much for hiking, so I instantly planned back to back days of it! Much like around the Hong Kong business and mid-level districts, the major theme of hiking around here is stairs!
First up was “The Twins,” where you hike two beautiful mountains overlooking the sea with a lush valley in between the two peaks. I arranged for my friend, Meg to meet up with Maggie, my grad school buddy visiting, and me in the morning. We hopped in a taxi and asked it to take us to the Parkview Apartment Complex, which is near the trail head. Before we got all the way to Parkview, we saw the small trail map on the side of the twisty turny road and asked to get out. We hopped out on the side of the road, I tied the baby to me in a baby wrap, (after all she was now 7 weeks old and hadn’t been hiking yet. Total slacker!)
From the road, we immediately started climbing up. You must first summit over “Violet Hill” before even reaching the start of the hike. It wasn’t until we reached the first summit that I realized we hadn’t even actually started The Twins hike yet. Ridiculous. Leave it to Hong Kongians to describe a hike and then leave off the part where you have to summit 1 mountain before you can start the actual hike! Then we went up. For a long time. The article I read said this hike, not including the first pretend peak, was 1200 steps. That seemed about right. Just stairs after stairs after stairs winding up. The view was amazing though and makes the stairs totally worth it! Then stairs down, down, down. Afterward, your knees mostly just feel like jelly. Exploring this area is the island is such a unique way to experience remote nature right alongside the bustling city. We met a few interesting people along the way, most of which stared at me for a bit and then did a double take and asked, “Is there a baby in there?!” I’m not sure what else they thought I had in there, but Monroe definitely got some baby props for being adventurous that day! She also gets some mad props from me for eating really well in the back of the taxi on the way back (yes, I breastfeed my baby in the back of taxis - this place is a far cry from the US in terms of child safety, but more on that in a future blog post!) After some very chilly but sweaty hiking, we warmed up with some amazing Japanese ramen and beer. It was the perfect end to a perfect morning!
The next day, the whole family and Maggie headed to hike Dragon’s back, one of the most famous hikes in the area, as the landscape across the top looks just like a jagged back of a dragon with views of the sea on either side. We should have known better after doing The Twins, but again, we underestimated the hike to get to the hike. Isla weighs a solid 35 pounds now so this pre-hike when she refused to walk turned out to be the biggest work out Nate’s gotten in in months! The guidebook basically says to ride to the Chai Wan MTR (metro) station, then just walk through a cemetery and start hiking. I can see how someone would say this, but you actually have to climb about 8 flights up stairs up the vertical cemetery, then another long curvy one through the woods, then you get to a path that still isn’t the hike, but eventually leads to another path that leads to the hike. NBD, thanks stupid guidebook. I learned my lesson again as Nate, Maggie and I all split one cliff bar across the next 5 hours. I now know to add 2 hours, 500 stairs and 6 granola bars to every hiking plan in HK! Dragon’s Back was beautiful and we didn’t even hike it on a clear day! I can’t wait to go back (with lots of snacks and perhaps minus my 2 year old) and take in the stunning landscape again soon.
Perhaps the most crazy part of this Dragon's Back day was our travel back home. The hike just drops you out on a curvy, narrow road that winds down to the end of a peninsula at a beach called Shek-O, but where you end the hike, there is fast traffic and minimal sidewalk. We didn't actually have a plan for how to get back, but when we saw a public bus coming, we didn't hesitate. Our rationale was that, where ever the bus was going was better than where we were as we could either get a taxi from down at the beach or get closer to an MTR station on the bus. We quickly ran onto the bus and we couldn't believe what a wild ride it was. We couldn't even make it to seats without falling over and gripping onto the bars for dear life as the bus accelerated quickly and then flew back and forth around the curves. By the time we got to our seats, 2 of us had fallen over and Isla was laughing hysterically. The ride continued to be shockingly fast and curvy. I remembered reading somewhere that if you chose to take a bus to Shek-O, you were, "taking your life in your own hands," as the article put it. I can now vouch for this! We ended up back at an MTR station, tired and starving. Luckily, there was a bakery inside the MTR station, so we gorged ourselves on some egg tarts before hopping back on the train.
Truthfully, I’ve been missing Melbourne a lot lately, and discovering how and where to escape into nature brings Hong Kong up a notch in my book! Now I just have to do all my PT exercises for my abs and knees so they they stay intact with the stair climbing insanity!!
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