Easter Weekend Part 1

It is Easter weekend and so that measn we have Friday to Monday off as a public holiday. This meant that we returned to Tai Long Wan beach to go camping for the second weekend in a row.

My experience last week with buffalo and mosquitos should have put me off returning to the beach. However, this time the buffalo were harrassing someone else.

The beach was amazing as usual. In the first picture you can see Nikki and Kristy setting up tents.

And like all good campers we needed plenty of liquid to compensate the two hour hike we had just completed.

We ate lots of food round the fire.

And then by the next morning we woke up.

Watched the sun rise over the sea.

Then we came close to dying.

There is a somewhat illegal boat service that you can get to take you from Tai Long Wan beach to Sai Kung. Taking this boat service means cutting out the two hour hike. Kristy was the only person in our group who had taken the speed boat before and we were all looking forward to it.

Early on in the journey Kristy remarked "The sea has never been this rough before". Which turned out to be the understatement of the day.

The boat was soon hitting 4 - 6 foot swells and then dropping like a fairground ride before being lifted back up and the entire sequence repeated again. At first it was fun, then as the waves got bigger I started to wish that I had hiked instead.

Not long after this I began looking for the nearest land and working out where I would climb up if the boat got overturned. Then the boat hit a particularly big wave and water came gushing over the front of the boat and covered everone and their belongings.

When there was a brief break in the waves I grabbed my camera to take a video. You can just about hear Kristy giving Nikki advice of what to do if she falls overboard.

Click here for the video.

But we did survive and we did make it to Sai Kung. One friend had difficulty moving his hand he was holding on to the boat so tightly during the journey.

I will think twice about taking the boat in the future!

bx