Cha Kwo Chau 茶果洲 is a tiny island in front of Tong Fuk. A few peculiar rocks & little more. OK for a kayak visit or long-distance swimmers.
- Beauty/fun: 3/10 I would not recommend this but if you are nearby. It si not easy to get to and for the effort, you could go to bigger & nicer islands around Lantau.
- Difficulty (check this link if new here, this is not your standard HK hiking web): 3/10 if you arrive on a kayak or are comfortable with a 1.7km x2 swim. Relatively easy scrambling and really short. You could do it completely dry with boat approach.
- The map (how to download to your phone offline maps)
The Garmin track.
Summer wanted to go to a quiet beach to enjoy the sun. I had the island on my radar long ago. Pack all beach stuff + my swim gear and take the MTR to Tung Chung & bus to Tong Fu Beach. Water as per HKObservatory at 16C. So wetsuit, super bright cap, orange buoy, red paddles. Inside the buoy, just in case, fins, the phone within the waterproof case, 500ml perpetuem mix, and body glide.
The crossing is a long one. 1.7km with possibility of finding boats around. So not the safest. I could see a big fishermen boat stopped in front, approx half way through. Careful approach. I made myself visible and I had the whistle ready just in case. Pass them and land on the island. Video of the couple of hours outing.
I coasteered it counterclockwise. Initial big pebble area. Afterwards some scrambling required, but minimal. I was mainly jumping from rock to rock to avoid the big gaps between some. A few minuscule tunnels to cross. I went up a bit to see the vegetation area (0:23). But it looked dense, I did not want to scratch the fragile triathlon wetsuit, and went back soon to the rocks. Several peculiar ones. The above kinda cut bread loaf. Checking more information now I also found that there is a Fist rock 👊.
A bit more than thirty minutes to check the whole island. Get back to the starting point. Pick up the buoy and carefully return. In this case I could see that the fishing boats were starting to have activity and I decided to detour a bit. Going to the minuscule Tuk Shek 獨石 (1:42) and back to Tong Fu.
Video where a group visits by boat first this and then a few highlights of SoKo Islands. Drone footage of the island is included.
Not a bad plan if you can arrange the speedboat in a reasonable price.
Everything you should know before open water swimming, coasteering & kayaking.
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