Hong Kong has proven to be an unusual mix of frenetic city and island life. The city itself is located on an island divided by a mountainous spine that separates the urban center in the north and a natural landscape in the south.
My first hike here was up a ridge called Dragon’s back where I met a woman who’d lived in Hong Kong her whole life. It wasn’t something I would have guessed as she was black, spoke English with an American accent and told me her name was Jemima. When I heard her name, I knew she certainly couldn’t be American because I can’t imagine a black woman in the States introducing herself as Jemima any more than I can imagine my nieces and nephew introducing me as Uncle Tom.
One of the things that did surprise me about Jemima is that she didn’t speak any Cantonese despite having grown up in Hong Kong. When I challenged her on that, she replied, “how much Cantonese have you had to speak here?” She had a valid point. The other surprise about Jemima is that she gave me the best recommendations of anyone on things to do in Hong Kong. We got along so well that she invited me to join her and her friends on the first hike of the new year. I made the mistake of assuming it would be similar to the hike we’d just done.
Everyone met at the metro station for Lantau island, and we caught a bus to the south side of the island. One of the many things I love about Hong Kong, is that there is public transportation to all of the trail heads. We hopped off the bus at a dam and took pictures of the lake behind it. Jemima pointed to a peak in the distance and said, “that’s where we’re going”. Lantau Peak appeared so high that I assumed she must be pointing to one of the foothills below it, and I didn’t question her.
The beginning of the trail was fairly easy. It started as a paved flat trail turned to dirt and climbed gradually. Things changed quickly however after I passed a warning sign, and Jemima called me back. “This is where we leave the trail that everyone else does”, she said as she broke away and began to climb up a steep narrow trail I hadn’t seen going up through the trees.
After about 15 minutes of clamoring hand over foot, one of our group decided that she’d had enough and declared she would climb back down and head home. It was a wise decision given that we had only covered a fraction of the hike. Several times we’d stop, and Jemima would keep pointing to the same peak and several times I wouldn’t believe her, so I just kept following along.
At one point I told her it should be called “False summit trail” because of the number of times I thought we’d reached the top. Fortunately for us, the clouds began to move in, and I was no longer able to see the summit forever towering above us. Jemima complained that every time she’d done the hike, the same thing happened. The hike would start out sunny, but by the time she reached the peak, it would be shrouded in clouds. I wanted to say, “so we don’t really need to go all the way up then, right?” What I didn’t realize is that once we reached the peak we’d be looking down on the clouds.
It’s hard to explain my repeated disappointment every time we scrambled to what seemed to be the last peak. It was impossible to know because we were hiking inside a cloud and had no way of knowing how far we were from the actual peak. When we’d finally climbed high enough to poke out of the clouds, I almost gasped in disappointment at how far it still seemed.
Fortunately, the final trek to the peak was paved with stairs, and we were able to rapidly ascend the final 400 feet. One thing I’ve observed about Hong Kong is that they really haven’t figured out switchbacks. Instead of steady trails zigzagging up a mountain, all trails seem to go straight up regardless of the slope. It explains why the people are in such good shape.
Once at the peak, we posed for numerous pictures and looked down at the reservoir from which we’d begun. It was hard to believe we were on top of that mountain she’d pointed to 4 hours ago or that we’d been climbing stairs for 4 hours. The sun was approaching the horizon so we decided to head down, stopping for several great sunset pictures along the way.
Instead of hiking back to the bottom, we headed to the Giant Buddha, which was only part way down, and we could catch a bus from there. Being a holiday weekend meant that everyone else in Hong Kong had decided to come up as well, and the line for the bus wound as far as the eye could see. One of the transit workers told us it would be about a 90 minute wait.
Fortunately Jemima had a solution. She said we could catch a different bus to the ferry terminal and catch the ferry home. There were only a handful of people in line for that bus, and I relished the idea of taking the ferry home. The problem was that the last ferry was scheduled to leave the island about the same time the bus was scheduled to arrive at the ferry landing.
Our stress jumped every time someone pushed the buzzer for a stop, and at one point we concluded there was no way we were going to make it, and we became one of those people causing stress when we pushed the button to get off at the next stop. We’d picked a stop at an intersection where we figured we could transfer to a bus headed for the metro station where we’d started the day. What we hadn’t counted on is that the buses were just as packed coming from the other side of the island.
The first full bus passed us by, but the second one had to stop to let a couple people off. We took advantage of this and hopped on the bus to fill the emptied spaces. Since there were five of us, we needed more space than was given up, and I ended up sitting on the stairwell of the bus. We passed other stops with as many as 15 people waiting and realized how lucky we were.
As I mentioned, Jemima made some of the best recommendations for Hong Kong, and her role as a great host continued after our hike. It turns out she’d booked a restaurant to help us replenish all the energy we’d burned. Our sore muscles were replenished by those of cows, pigs and chickens at Braza, a Brazilian steak house. If you’ve never been, it’s one of those places where the servers stop by your table every couple minutes with a board full of protein.
Most of our group headed for the expansive salad bar when we arrived, and they asked me why I didn’t join them in filling my plate with all the beautiful vegetables. I told them that was all just filler to keep us from eating too much meat, and that I would get my vegetables through the animals that had eaten them.
Despite my carnivorous feast, it took a few days for my body to recover. The dog I was pet sitting probably wondered why we were all of a sudden only walking along the waterfront instead of the hills behind the condo. I tried to explain to him that I had already completed all my steps for 2024 on New Year’s Day.