Hiking to Tai Long Wan

For the Easter break we planned to go hiking and camping for 2 nights in the Sai Kung Country Park at Tai Long Wan.   This is one of Hong Kong's finest beaches (link) and can only be reached by boat or hiking.

Tai Long Wan from Sharps Peak trail, courtesy of my colleague Emma

We packed on Thursday night and planned to leave early Friday morning.  But we were late leaving and ran into the holiday crowds at Sai Kung queuing for the limited public transport.  Only the few special New Territories taxies can enter the Country Park, so there was there was a double-line around the NT taxi-stand.

And the same for the #94 Bus to Wong Shek Pier.

Hannah waited very patiently for an hour until we got a taxi.  Well done Hannah!

And once we were in a taxi it was a lovely 20min ride through the park to Wong Shek where we readily found a speedboat to take us across Long Harbor to join the Maclehose trail.

Speedboat from Wong Shek Pier

Video:  speedboat on Long Harbour

Everyone ready to start hiking.

We joined the Maclehose Trail Stage 2, and walked uphill for about 40min to the pass overlooking the Tai Wan bay, and another 20min down-hill to the beach

Rika had been training for the hike by doing circuits of Shatin shopping-malls, and Hannah & I didn't have to slow down and wait for her too often.

View looking east from the top of the trail.

Detail:   Tai Wan (Big Beach) on left, Ham Tin (Salty Field) beach on right.

The villages at Tai Long and Ham Tin are almost deserted these days but we saw a few locals.

We had pre-booked a tent at the Hoi Fung restaurant (via the ever-helpful Carol Lai 2328-2315) and set it up with some shade at the official camp-sit on the beach.  

Early afternoon view from our front door.