Dragon's Back

2017 July 20

I wake up at 5:30 or 6:00am here for some reason, regardless of how much sleep I get. Last night I got back late from the jazz club, then wrote up my post, and got to sleep at around 2:00am. Then of course I woke up at 5:30, ready to spend the day hiking. Winter, the girl living with us in our room on her last two days in this hostel, had planned a solo day hike at Dragon’s Back on the Eastern side of Hong Kong Island, and yesterday after we first met had asked if I wanted to come along. 5:30 was a bit too early for her, so I spent a quiet morning in the tranquil common space on the second floor before heading back up to fill my pack and leave with her. We were both really hungry and grabbed a quick breakfast of beef ramen with scrambled eggs, buttered bread buns and coffee, which is actually the most common breakfast food around here and in Shanghai the morning I left. When we went to split the bill, there was a lot of confusion because of the language barrier, and a couple of other locals eating there that morning jumped in to help with translation. To make things easier she just paid the full amount and we split it outside.

The road to Dragon’s Back was a metro trip East on the blue line from Wan Chai Station to Shau Kei Wan Station, followed by a number 9 bus along Shek O, which zig-zagged up the narrow mountain road to Lan Nai Wan. The view from the bus stop immediately after stepping out was this: On the other side of the road there was a small path towards Dragon’s Back. Just inside there was a beautiful small stream flowing accross a stone staircase then a small bamboo forest. The rest of the hike got progressively more beautiful, and more sweaty, until we finally made it to one of the higher peaks of the trail. The view at the top was absolutely stunning, and there was a steady breeze from the water below. After spending quite some time at the top, we eyed a path down the other side of the mountain that had clearly not been taken very often. It quickly transformed from a more leisurely trail to an expert and slightly dangerous trail. There was a lot of overgrowth, areas of steep declines, and slippery rock faces from stray streams. At one point we had to walk through a particularly dense section and slip through where a wire fence had been cut, which was our first definitive clue that we probably shouldn’t have been through here. But finally, we eyed some stairs, and made it to some maintenance infrastructure that I’m guessing was built to channel water off of the mountain to prevent mud slides during flash floods. We followed this down to the rock face overlooking the road. Just as I got down to the railing something caught the corner of my right eye, and I looked over just in time to see a pack of wild dogs jogged away from me, its leader looking back to make sure I wasn’t following. We took the other path and followed the railing down to a staircase to the road below. We walked the rest of Shek O on the road.

At one point we stopped to see our progress, and Winter made this excited sound and told me to come check this spider out. I thought ‘Oh great’, but she had been backpacking for about a month and a half, and I trusted that if she wasn’t freaked out, there was nothing to worry about. Well. No. She pointed, and I followed her finger and almost let out a little pee. I didn’t want to get too close, so the picture isn’t the best, but at first glance you’ll clearly see the spider in the center against the sky. You might be thinking ‘That looks about the right size, what’s the big deal?’ Then you should look a little closer and see the black specks on its web. You might be thinking that those are small flies. Nope. Those little things are actually males of this same species of spider. The males are the size of somewhat larger spiders that I’m used to seeing back in the states, but they are up to one thousand times smaller than their female counterparts. Then you realize that I took this picture from the side of the road about ten feet from the web, and you should have enough information to know that the star of the picture has a body almost the length of my hand and a leg span of approximately holy shit. I didn’t know this at the time, and only just discovered this writing this post, but this spider is called the Nephila Pilipes. It is the largest orb-weaving spider, and one of the largest spiders in the entire world. They are thankfully not poisonous to humans, but their bite apparently hurts like a wasp’s sting. The webs that they weave are large and strong enough to literally hear them tearing if you walk through one, which I had incidentally done earlier in the hike. If I had known at the time what I know now, Winter would have been carrying me back to the road herself.

But at last, we made it to the bottom of the road to a small town where we walked for a bit and grabbed something to drink at a small cafe. We walked another hundred meters down the road from there to the beach, where we spent the next few hours before making our way back to Wan Chai. We were out from 7:30am until around 6pm. And by 7:30pm I was sleeping like a rock.

Thanks for being an incredible travel partner, Winter.