Small island in the way to Saikung that requires swimming or kayaking there. Nice rock formations with varied terrain, including high cliffs and flat coral areas.
- Beauty/fun: 8/10. Cliffs, corals, the tunnel into another world, the angry dragon rock, possibly cleaner water, usually no one but kayakers around.
- Difficulty (check this link if new here, this is not your standard HK hiking web): 8/10 700m swim to start and, most probably, finish the route. Longish island with tons to explore. High cliffs to climb on if trying to avoid longer and more frequent swims.
- The map (how to download to your phone offline maps)
See full screen and Garmin track.
The start is on Little Palm Beach. The closest public transport would leave you up on Clear Water Bay road, 20 minutes downhill concrete walk. So we took taxi from Hang Hau instead. Once on the beach the route is clear. Just head to the water
and swim around that headland
before turning NE direct to a rock beach where to land. If you dare leave your kayak unattended for a long while, I would suggest you to head a bit more North for an easier landing spot within the coral shelter area.
Initially, we were walking in flatter rocks.
But soon the scrambling started.
Peculiar formation in front and a clear example (seeing the landslide) of the type of rock we were going to encounter.
Check carefully before trusting too much any given rock. Some were “detachable”.
Several high cliffs to pass if wanting to avoid too many swims. Here the rock quality was better.
Arriving at what Colin named as the Archway to another world.
The arch and the tree just after are really impressive. The trash around nope…
The East coast was more interesting than expected. You can zoom in to see a bit more.
We checked the Southernmost flat section and then head back to the main cliffs.
Going really high some times.
Once you pass the initial 1/3 of the East coast you will start to see rocky/pebble flatish areas.
Not so easy on a wavy day.
Small caves in front.
From within.
Change on the rocks color.
Arriving at Angry Dragon.
I have also seen it called Sleeping Dragon. It looks a Duck to me. Up to your imagination. Once passed you get into “flat land” and coral areas afterwards.
You can see the yellow buoys that delimit the coral areas where the motorized boats should not get into.
Go back to starting point and swim back to the beach. Initially we thought to continue a bit more on the coastile and exit through a hiking path we had seen on the map (green line)
But it was getting late + waves starting to hit harder and we decided to go back to the starting point and Uber back.
Video by Tyler of the full route ex-swims. 17 seconds in, Iurgi wrongly calculating when the wave was going to hit the rock… No problem (scratch free) with the wetsuit on.
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