Too windy and wavy to go to the best Saikung coasteering routes but still want to enjoy the water, beach & some scrambling? The route for you.
- Beauty/fun: 6.5 nice water, beaches, short fun walls to traverse on, side stream fun. A bit too flat in several sections.
- Difficulty (check this link if new here, this is not your standard HK hiking web): 4.5/10 relatively low scrambling even trying to swim as little as possible (two mini swims), even easier if you shortcut in the inlands, several potential early exits (hiking paths).
- Map (how to download to your phone offline maps)
See full screen & Garmin track.
There are no easy public transportation options to start and finish this route. In our case, to avoid the heavy weekend traffic around Saikung village, we took a taxi from Wu Kai Sha. Tung A the name we told the taxi driver. Stop on the road. Concrete path down and Pak A Pier the start of the coasteering. Easy flattish initially.
First scrambling
& nice beach.
Just a little after the best coasteering section in this route (purple rectangle on the map). There are a few shallow caves
and inlands to scramble.
Perfect to test your traversing skills.
Have someone check the depth of the water, just in case. Eventually, you will need to jump into it, unless you are an extremely good climber.
Approx tide 1.3m when we were there. As you can see even if the forecast in the area said that the waves could be over 1m high, with the landmass protection both on the East & North the sea was almost completely calm. Around Po Pin Chau that very same day it was extremely choppy.
Second nice beach, Kam Lo Wan. It is quite common to find people who arrive there with junks & yachts on weekends.
Turn East and find the abandoned resort of Tai She Wan (大蛇灣 Big Snake Bay). A very peculiar place with all the old statues & random stuff.
It used to be a complete mess. Last time there, in late Nov 2021, the vegetation around was cut and it seemed that groups had been using it for (illegal, trespassing) parties.
A bit more of easy scrambling and we arrived at this beach and stream.
There are a couple of streams in the area. The one we checked was not bad even though it hadn’t rained in a long while. In the summertime, it must have nice waterfalls and pools where to remove the sea salt.
Afterward, nothing especially interesting. Another Finger of God that you can climb on. A tiny lighthouse. Flattish.
If you continue coasteering you eventually will arrive at a ship junkyard. You might want to go up the stream I have marked on the map and onto a clear hiking path instead. The junkyard area is not very nice to coasteer on + they requested us to not post any pics of it on the internet.
And find a taxi for the return. On good weather weekends this can be difficult, so start early, have taxi phone numbers ready, and be patient. In our case, we were lucky and we did not wait at all. We took a taxi that dropped people there, next to the Water sports center, on our way up the road.
November 2022: This route, leaving the coasteering after the nice stream, bushier than expected path (last pics),
and then we continued towards Po Kwu Wan (not the most interesting, but you can read about it in the post).
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