Archways, tunnels, caves, clean water, fun scrambles, nice resting spots. And if you want more you can always try the rest of the islands š
- Beauty/fun: 9/10. Impressive cliffs and rock formations, several sea arches/caves/tunnels, a nice water beach (although without as much sand as before) and coral area.
- Difficulty (check this link if new here, this is not your standard HK hiking web): 8.5/10 Remote, very exposed to waves, several swims, high cliffs to scramble on, very long day if trying to visit as much as possible.
- The map (how to download to your phone offline maps)
See full screen & Garmin track.
One year after our first expedition to Ninepin Islands we hired the boat again heading to the South Island. Tyler with his swimming group friends and me with the “climbers” that would try to keep drier.
Land and directly cross the main arch.
Time to start the fun scrambling.
Jumping into the water is a must not very long after.
Even if the forecast was perfect with minimal waves (SE 0.3m)
the island is completely exposed and therefore we had some action in this corridor and similar structures.
Turning and
finding the
caves area.
The first two are caves with dead ends. Torch required to go to the deepest points.
Beware of waves! Caves channel and amplify them. Buddies were not ready and got a good scare… You can even see the power, with a huge “bell” (actually a big gas container, I think, 00:49 at the video below) crushed on the ceiling of the washing machine cave.
Next, the third cave, which is a three entry tunnel. Far away the West coast end.
And at the opposite side the bigger entry we used to access and the third one.
Continue on the East coast and little later another big cave tunnel,
from where you could shortcut to the West coast too.
We continued leaving it behind.
In front the next target.
Swim to
Tai Chau Mei.
A few nice rock structures & scrambling.
But not especially pretty. Swim back, seen the last tunnel from the opposite direction.
And later the three entry tunnel’s Western end.
Some more scrambling to test yourself, or just shortcut swim
before arriving at the pebble beach from where you can find a hiking path back to the starting point. A very good drone picture that shows this area (I could not find who took it…)
Video of all the previous. Original footage by Wayne and his 360 GoPro.
We went up to the hill above the arch.
See the tiny temple and back to the coastline to check everything till the Northernmost point before our boat pick up.
The openstreetmap showed a cave in this area, but we could not find anything remarkable.
Beautiful scrambling continuing Northwards.
Until we arrived to the small islets already visited in the previous year.
From there we went back and hiked to the hill above, so that the ladies could have a full view of the last part of the island, and head back to the start to get onto the boat on time.
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