Getting away from it all for an afternoon over on Tung Lung Chau (Photo-essay)

For much of my time in Hong Kong, I've tried to go out hiking at least once a week.  But between June 9th through to mid December last year, I didn't venture into Hong Kong's countryside -- bar for beach clean-ups (and even those activities have been far less frequent than I would like).  Instead, I restricted my tramping to Hong Kong streets, often on protest marches in various parts of the territory, including sections of Kowloon and the New Territories as well as Hong Kong Island.  

But after resuming hiking in December, I've found the lure of Hong Kong's great outdoors hard to resist once more.  And with health scares prompted by the Wuhan coronavirus -- whose death toll reached 249 this morning, with confirmed cases of infections closing in on the 12,000 mark -- at for much of this new year, I figure that it's good to go out hiking once again to help ensure one's physical as well as psychological well-being.  

Thus it was that this afternoon saw two friends and I take a boat over to Tung Lung Chau (trans. Eastern Dragon Island), a small Outlying Island that, the last time I visited, I got to fearing that my hiking buddy was going to come down with heat stroke!  With temperatures in the teens on the Celsius scale today, there was little fear of a repeat.  And while the ferry there and back was more crowded (and filled with masked people) than I would like, it actually was pretty easy enough to find ourselves in uncrowded spaces on this 2.42 square kilometer island; this even though, if truth be told, there are actually not that many trails -- paved and otherwise -- on it! ;b

It wasn't the sunniest of afternoons but that fact didn't deter a good 

number of people from deciding to visit Tung Lung Chau today!

 

Having spotted its distinctive peak on the boat ride over 

to the island, we absolutely had to climb up Hen Hill! :b

 

The ruins of the Qing Dynasty Tung Lung Fort is another

top Tung Lung Chau attraction

 

On this visit, I was intrigued by the foot prints left on the fort's 

interior surface by what I'm assuming were a good number of birds!

 

Not far from the fort are some pretty amazing-looking cliffs

 

Gazing out to sea from them, it can feel like

you're looking out at the edge of the world...

 

There truly were times when it seemed like we were

hundreds or thousands of miles away from the rest of

Hong Kong, and its current troubles

 

 One of the great joys of living in Hong Kong, even now, 

is that one can feel able to get away from it all

with not much of an effort,  even if for just a few hours