Hong Kong Travels: Cape D'Aguilar
Like Moby Dick, Miss Willy has taunted me for years. At the extreme southern tip of Hong Kong Island, she is just out of the way enough to require some intention to visit. Fortunately, I finally found the force of will to go (23rd June) before I g o (29th June). I knew the peninsula wouldn't be hard to follow – the hike would not be more difficult than following a small road until it reached the sea.
I’ve always been unsure how to pronounce the name. Perhaps someone will explain it to me, and I can die content. Luckily, you don’t need to pronounce the name to take a bus to it, which leaves from Shau Kei Wan. The road over the island’s interior always offers visually dynamic views towards Kowloon; overlapping apartment blocks slowly overtaken by green ridges, eventually subsuming all other colours.
And then, when you reach the southern side, the reverse is true; green bends make way suddenly for high roads around deep falls into deep blue water, some scattered highrises gathered close together, afraid to fall down.
After you wrestle against the trees blocking a good video or photograph out the window, you can choose to step off the bus one stop too early and find yourself in summer heat on the side of the road. Fortunately, there were few cars to stop me making my way up the rest of the street to the start of the trail. In a way, it was the right decision as I had the chance to view Shek O through the valley and walk under some busy dragonflies.
The start of the walk has a very cute drawing on the substation advocating for recycling and renewable energy. There is no escape from street art in Hong Kong, it is everywhere. Once you walk past this point, there is no other way but forward. Technically, there are one or two “off-piste” routes, signified by the different coloured ribbons that you will see in every part of Hong Kong. They all go down to the water on this hike, however the thought of climbing back up again put me off almost immediately that day. The beginning of the paths were also far too close to the many golden orb spiders (or ‘banana spiders’) for my liking. Once an insect has noticeable weight, they are generally too large to keep around, in my opinion. Doubly so if I get caught in the web.
There are a few pretty rock formations along the way, and the right side (if walking down) drops off to show Stanley and, at the edge of the sea, the Hong Kong Satellite Earth Station. I could see on the day one boat bobbing lazily in the deep blue water, but out in the distance were the ever-present cargo ships.
The walk continues along a gently winding road and past some small communities, places you could imagine yourself retreating to if life became too much. There is no uniformity in the modest housing, even less so considering the classic squatter huts. These have been comically built behind a sign expressing government opposition to the building of squatter huts in the area. In addition, older warehouses suggest some sort of industry, though what it could be (or could have been) in such a difficult terrain I am unsure of. There is a certain charm to old sheds, especially wooden ones. Bits of board that are broken away hint at what’s stored inside; the sense of an old business too small to bother with minor repairs just to keep the tree roots out.
Because I decided to walk in the middle of summer, there were far more bugs than you would hope for. Spiders, as I’ve said, were most obvious, but there were also many butterflies, which I appreciated much more. I tried to take a photo of one as it landed on a flower, but I was too slow. The bugs certainly enjoyed the weather more than I did – Hong Kong in summer keeps you permanently wet either from sweat or humidity or rain.
You progress around the cliffside and eventually begin to slope down and around, passing by the massive Beaufort Island, which makes any passing boat look like an ant. Behind it is the even more imposing Po Toi, the southernmost point of the Hong Kong territory and the last land before the emptiness of the South China Sea. Sung Kong, uninhabited, is popular with adventurers, but inaccessible without a boat. All the islands looked magnificent in the afternoon sun, and I regret I do not have time to explore them before I leave. A few more corners and you come to the picturesque Cape D’Aguilar Supersite Air Quality Monitoring Station (a must-see for anyone claiming to have visited Hong Kong). For the first time, you see the other side of the peninsula and begin to approach the water. You have to walk around the station along a well-worn path to the very end of the land, to the craggy outcropping where the Swire Institute of Marine Science is situated. They provide guided tours of the protected marine ecosystem, if you ever do make it down there. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to take the tour.
I spent a time on the cape and indulged in light bouldering on extremely sharp rocks to climb above the collapsed roof of Crab Cave, to fulfil the primal urge to be as high and far out as I could possibly be before running out of land. The ridges were tricky to navigate and required a low centre of gravity, as the drop onto the waiting rocks below was immediate: if you are going to attempt it yourself, it is best to scoot along as much as possible to avoid a bloody mess.
Unfortunately, someone had beaten me to it. Three stones had been placed on the rock nearest to the edge. The flatter ground made it pleasant to stand on for a while, with a quick cool breeze very welcome as long as I stayed where I was. The mix of deserted islands, green vegetation behind me, a sudden drop in front, a choppy sea, and a hint of highrises in the distance felt like a synopsis of the whole of Hong Kong, and was worth the climb to experience. Others, visitors from the mainland, were not as confident in climbing up, and even a local was only partially successful.
The most exceptional feature of the cape is, of course, Miss Willy. The baby fin whale’s skeleton had been obsessing me for years, in the way that idle thoughts coalesce into obsession when given enough time and consideration. Finally seeing it, I felt slightly sad for it. Although the bones have been replaced with copies, the presentation of a baby whale forever looking out at a sea it cannot rejoin feels a little insensitive on behalf of the animal, but an understandable placement for a marine research institute.
Aside from lots of little crabs darting for cover as I approached, and the lovingly-sprinkled polystyrene boxes (a nice reminder of how storms throw everything around the coast eventually), Thunder Cave is another small site worth ducking into. It is a small slit in the rock with a high ceiling, dripping water, and a tiny channel that pushes the seawater inside in a rush of thunderous, salty spray. The Bokhara Battery is worth seeing in order to ponder the not-too-distant war, though it is mostly a ruin now. Finally, the lighthouse is cute, modest, and a protected building. Keep in mind there is a staircase on the far side, so you don’t need to scramble up the grass bank as I did.
And with that finished, I turned back and headed up the road to the bus stop. I sat and ate my apple solemnly as I watched several buses pass by that weren’t my own, slower walkers catching up with me and failing to find a place to sit at the side of the street. Was it worth the effort to see a whale skeleton? For ticking off a line of my bucket list, yes. By itself? It may be better to see other things in the area too. The drinks machine at the end of the trail should be a mandatory feature of any hiking destination. For myself, I was simply glad to stand at the bottom of Hong Kong Island and hold hands with a whale.
Comments