Rush hour on the waterfall path

Lunch time in Mui Wo. Sometimes, the restaurants can get crowded real quickly...

... so be sure to get there early to pick your spot...

... especially when there's a traffic bottleneck.

This buffalo wasn't planning on going anywhere so the human hikers had to wait until he'd had enough of standing around looking macho.

Map to Butterfly Hill watchtower

Reproduced with kind permission of Andrew Wood. But he wants to point out that he doesn't own the copyright to the aerial photos or contour map so please don't duplicate.

Cheung Chau day trip

Baby ambulance.

 That's you told!

Some lovely houses on the hillside. I wanted one and then Buffalo Wilbur pointed out an old woman huffing and puffing uphill. Nah!

 Lunch at a Thai-Indonesian place. Food tastes Cantonese. Very strange.

Looks like Cheung Chau is ready for Christmas.

The case of the disappearing trail

We thought we'd try out the Discovery Bay Golf Course to Mui Wo walk, which we found on our Countryside Series map. Picking up the trail was easy. It starts from the last flyover approaching the golf club. 

Then it petered off. Fifteen minutes or so into the walk, the trail came to a dead end, right smack against a huge construction site (I think it was for the Discovery Bay super luxury homes, as reported in the SCMP). I didn't take any photos because we were busy trying to find the path again.

Finally we ended up walking along the fence to end up... ON the golf course, dodging flying balls and puzzled golfers. We thought we'd be able to pick up the trail again somewhere down the road but the course went on and on.

Thankfully a golf course operative came along on his buggy and offered (more like ordered) us into the buggy and off the course. Thankfully... because as he later told us, the course was a 27-hole one. We would have been walking for hours without finding either the clubhouse or the trail.

After a good 10 minutes on the buggy, he took us to the edge of the course, showed us Mui Wo and helped us make our way though the bushes.

It was scary having no trail to follow. I had mental images of us getting hopelessly lost and having to call for a rescue helicopter.

Then Buffalo Wilbur spotted what looked like a path and we scrabbled down the hill to meet it. And wow, a distance marker!

Tung Chung in the distance.

We walked and walked. I was getting worried because it was getting dark and we had no idea which trail we were on. Then we met one guy walking the other way, radio blaring. Civilisation!

Turned out we were on the Lok Fu Tau trail.

Phew! A familiar marker!

 
Usually my posts are about what to do but this is about what NOT to do. The Discovery Bay folks appear to have killed this popular trail. I hope they revive it once the construction is complete but I wouldn't hold my breath.

On the Olympic trail

We finally tackled the Olympic trail. We've been putting it off because the name sounded like it would be an Olympian effort. But it turned out surprisingly easy... there were even families with toddlers walking the trail. Actually, the only bit that we found difficult was walking over the saddle from the Silvermine Caves.

Once you get to the rain shelter, it's mainly downhill or flat.  

Pat Mong village awaits on the other side of the trail. It is home to the famous Sword Sharpening Stone (so called because the stones look like they were cleft in two).

 And the village watch tower, which doubled as the village school after World War II.

The rest of the walk to Tung Chung was relatively blah... but if you walk through the underpass at Pat Mong, at least you get the views of the sea and the airport. It took us about two hours to cover the trail and another hour trying to find our way to Tung Chung.

First walk of the season

Can't believe it's already October and the weather still hasn't cooled down enough for a walk. Defying the "hike on Chung Yeung Festival" rule, we tried our first autumnal walk today (our favourite beginner-level Mui Wo to Pui O) and boy, was it a sweaty process!

Nice to see the buffaloes are still around and that the babies have all grown up.

Mui Wo has a Base Camp

That stretch of road where the Hong Kong Jockey Club is used to be a bit of a dead zone but seems to have gotten exciting recently. Village Bakery is opening soon (looks like yesterday was only a trial run). And now we have Lantau Base Camp, one of those "why didn't we think of it earlier" shops catering to mountain bikers and hikers.

Shopowner Jeremy is really nice and chatty and he lives in Pui O, so he's familiar with most of the trails around Lantau South.

Non-residents can leave their bags in the shop (for a HK$15 fee) and go hiking without having to hump the extra baggage around. After they're done, they can just pick it up and head for the ferry.

How can you lose something this colour?

Found at Shap Long sitting area.

How could anyone have lost a hot pink comb? We spotted it metres away!

The house in the woods

We were getting a bit bored with our usual Mui Wo-Pui O route so we decided to try another one that went a little over the mountain.

And we were glad we did because we came across this charming village house tucked among an overgrown orchard.

The old couple who lived there were as charming as their house. When we asked them the path to Shap Long, they came out and showed us the way... speaking in English.

Hiking, Korean style

We have been seeing more and more hikers on our favourite Mui Wo-Pui O trail now that the weather is perfect for hitting the trails.

Most of us are well-equipped with walking sticks, proper hiking boots and fleeces but the Korean hikers beat us all flat.

On our walk today, we spotted a group that also brought along a portable stove. They set up camp at the Shap Long sitting-out area and promptly began to get the stove going to make den jang jjigae.

Then, from the other backpacks, other goodies started emerging: apples, sandwiches, kimbap, dok and even a container full of homemade radish kimchi.

They saw us casting envious looks and generously offered to share their food with us. So, with the sun on our faces and the sea breeze helping us work up an appetite, we took part in one of the best picnics we've ever known.

To the lovely folks who made our routine hike so much more special: 감사합니다!

Naughty fungi

Shakespeare writes: "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." I am thinking these mushrooms I found on our walk looks like some part of the human anatomy. Guess I must have a dirty mind.

Wonder what they are called and whether they're edible?