Diving Thoughts

Continuing from the previous weekend, Rita and I decided to carry on along the Wilson Trail. Having done the first 2 sections on Hong Kong island, we moved over to Kowloon and the New Territories.

The Wilson Trail has come in for some criticism for its poor direction signs, and I think a lot of that criticism is entirely justified. Yes there are some areas where you get a sign every 10 yards. But these tend to be in areas where’s there’s only one path and you’d need a machete to go far wrong. Unfortunately when you get to a junction, or a village with a multitude of paths, the signs tend to be more problematic. At best they will be on the wrong side of a post, so you only see them if you look back having missed the turning. At worst they are conspicuous by their absence. Stage 3 in particular is among the worst offenders.

Stage 3 starts at Yau Tong. I checked the Internet before setting out to find out exactly where it starts and I found 3 alternatives, all of which were different from the route I took from Lam Tin the last time I walked this section. Armed with 2 of these suggestions and a couple of maps, we opted for exit A from Yau Tong MTR, then headed through Yau Tong Estate to a roundabout. Left there and immediately right on to the road up the Chinese Cemetery and we were on our way. We decided to ignore the 2 forts on Devil’s Peak, but these are worth a look if you’ve not been there before. One is a WWII era Pottinger Battery, which was there to protect the access to the harbour. The other is Gough Battery, which dates back to 1898 and is at the top of the hill.

You then drop down Devil’s Peak and come across a couple of ambiguous signs that left us walking along a Water Services catchment and climbing over a barrier to get to a set of steps leading down to a road. Crossing that and you start heading uphill to a large white board which you can see for miles. Along the ridge, then a left turn takes you past a really strange shrine, with lots of statues made out of wire frame covered by cement. There are all sorts of things depicted, including soldiers (apparently Japanese, Kuo Min Tang and Communist), turtles, monkeys, deer, and a man who looked as though he was indulging in an opium pipe.  According to an old article I later found in the Standard someone called Lee Chun-bor had found ths shrine in around 1988 and had then built the scuptures.

At the foot of the hill we went through a fairly large village, and I have to say it’s not the nicest village I’ve ever seen in Hong Kong. At the main road there is a big map for you to look at. Unfortunately it is so badly faded as to be completely useless. After a bit of guesswork we crossed the road and took the small road straight on. Fortunately this turned out to be correct and after a few ups and downs we went through another village. This time there there were at least 2 paths through it, but fortunately they joined up again later, since we were on the wrong one. Then there is quite a pleasant walk for a short while along a stream before you arrive at the finish point for stage 3 – the Clearwater Bay road at Chan Lan Shui (or Tseng Lan Shui – I’ve seen both used).

Stage 4 starts across the road and after some effort, we found our way to a path leading up a nice wooded hillside, and then down the other side. Along here is a large white house which looks as though it’s being renovated, although it looked like it was being renovated the last time I was here nearly 12 months ago. It’s quite a big place, so perhaps it’s some sort of religious retreat rather than a private residence.

Further on we started the long drag up the back of Fei Ngo Shan. This goes on for nearly 2km and is the steepest part of the hike, but we were rewarded with some great views. We then followed the road down to Shatin Pass, ignoring the notices and barriers that were talking about the road being blocked by a landslip. The landslip happened during the heavy rains in June, and they have repaired it enough that you can walk through, although the barriers they have erected don’t encourage it. Unfortunately there are no signs suggesting an alternative route, which is not particularly helpful.

Stage 4 ends at Shatin Pass, but from there we walked down to Wong Tai Sin, took a quick look at the temple complex and then caught the MTR to Jenny’s (Hin Ho curry restaurant) in Sai Wan Ho for a well needed beer and curry.

Stage 3 is 8km and we took 2:hours 15 minutes. Stage 4 is supposedly 8.6km, and took us 2 hours 20 minutes. Temperature: 23-24C. Humidity: 70%.

Another good BBC video. This time of gannets feeding, from both above and below the surface. Go and watch it at the BBC website. It’s a leading contender in BBC2′s wildlife programme “Nature’s Top 40″.

Hooker Valley Swing bridge

Wed 19 Nov: The noise of the wind almost blowing the flysheet away meant we didn’t have a great night’s sleep in the tent, and we got up to a cloudier day. After a quick breakfast we headed off on the Hooker Valley trail towards the the Hooker glacier and Mt. Cook. It was cold with occasional showers, but the scenery was still spectacular.

The trail itself crosses the river leading down from the glacier to Lake Pukaki twice via swing bridges. It was a very pleasant, although windy, walk, up to a small lake below the glacier, in which there were several large chunks of ice, which had presumably broken off. It was around 2 hours each way. We even came across some Mt. Cook Lilies, which are a type of buttercup that are only supposed to grow in this region, although we did spot some near Doubtful Sound later in the week. After getting back to the car, we headed further south towards Queenstown.

Ultimately we decided to press on to Kingston rather than stay in Queenstown, and we found a nice clean cabin at a holiday park.  It was nearly 8pm, so we quickly headed down the road to the pub by the old station. I hadn’t realised that Kingston is home to the Kingston Flyer, which is a steam train that has been restored, and 2 engines were locked up in the yard for the night, looking immaculate.  We took a couple of pictures then went to get a beer and some food.

The pub was a nice place with several locals in there, but I got the impression that if we hadn’t come in, they would have closed it because the guys at the bar kept asking if it was last orders yet. Unfortunately no-one offered to buy us beer to keep the place open a bit longer, so at around 9:30 we left. It had only just gone dark. These long Spring/Summer evenings are something you forget about when you live nearer the tropics.

The BSAC Incident Report for 2008 is now available from BSAC’s website. I’ve not had time to go through it in detail, but please download it from BSAC.

Tue 18 Nov: After getting up at some ridiculous hour in the morning and driving to Auckland airport, we found ourselves on a 06:10 flight to Christchurch. It was a bit cloudy over the North Island, but as we got further south the cloud lifted, and as we flew over Nelson we had a fantastic view of the Abel Tasman park and Marlborough Sounds.

Lake Pukaki and the Southern Alps

We got into Christchurch on time at 07:30, picked up a hire car and headed further south. We stopped in Ashburton for breakfast and to pick up some camping gas and then carried on to Peel Forest. We did a couple of interesting walks here. First for a couple of hours through the forest. The second was much shorter and went to a totara tree with a circumference of over 9 metres.

We carried on driving to Lake Tekapo, which has great views across a turquoise lake towards the snowy peaks of the Southern Alps. The colour of the lake is quite bizarre and is caused by ‘rock flour’ in the water. This is sediment that was created when the lake was gouged out by a stony-bottomed glacier moving across the land. The rocks ground out fine particles which are suspended in the glacial melt water, giving the water a milky quality which refracts the sunlight. Lake Pukaki has the same brilliant blue colour. Unfortunately photos don’t really do it justice. Or perhaps I’m not a very good photographer!There is a lovely little church at Lake Tekapo, the Church of the Good Shepherd, which was built in 1935.

We pressed on along the banks of Lake Pukaki and on to Mt. Cook, where we pitched our tent at the White Horse Hill Department of Conservation (DOC) campground just below Mount Sefton. That cost us NZD 5 per person.  As you can see from the photo, the view from the tent was spectacular and it was a lovely clear evening.  We cooked dinner and drank a bottle of red wine then turned in for the night. The stars were remarkably clear as there was no background light or light pollution for miles around. Overnight the wind picked up significantly and it did turn cold, but it was a beautiful place to stay and very convenient for the hiking trails around there.

Aucklands green and pleasant land

Mon 17 Nov: Audkland is known as the City of Sails, and there certainly are a lot of boats. Although we were walking along the waterfront, so perhaps that’s not surprising. There’s quite a lot of reference to the America’s Cup, and a nice maritime museum. There’s also an Irish pub which we were forced to drink beer in while sheltering from the rain. We wandered around part of the business district before going up the Sky Tower to get an overview of the city. At 328 metres high, it is apparently the tallest tower in the southern hemisphere, and you do get a good view from there, even on a dull, rainy day.

We had dinner with Greg (a former SCDC member), and his family. He’s married to a Taiwanese Kiwi and they have a 1 year old son. It was a good evening, washed down with New Zealand beer and red wine.

A good video from the BBC showing basking sharks feeding off Devon and Cornwall. It’s only 30 seconds long, so go and take a look. You can see it here.

Sun 16 Nov:

Boats at Tutukaka

Cousteau rated them among the best 10 divesites in the world. I don’t have his broad experience, but I was pretty impressed with the Poor Knights.  We were diving with Dive! Tutukaka and they wanted us at the dive shop to do all the paperwork and kit us out at 8am in time for the boat to leave at 8:30am. Half an hour seemed a bit optimistic to me since neither of us had brought anything more than a swimming costume and a dive computer. But they were incredibly efficient, and everything was done in fifteen minutes, leaving us plenty of time to go and get some of the fantastic New Zealand pies for breakfast.

The skipper did a very thorough yet entertaining briefing and we set off on a 45 minute ride out to the islands. There was a slight pause for us to look at a pod of dolphins, but before long we were at the first dive site, Brady’s Corner.

Since the 2 of us were a little more experienced than some of the others on board, the dive guides were happy for us to dive by ourselves. We kitted up in unfamiliar 7mm 2 piece wetsuits and were soon ready to go. We followed a wall down to 25 metres and within 5 minutes we’d seen 2 stingrays and an eagle ray. The topography was really interesting and the water was pretty clear – much better than Hong Kong, although that’s not saying much. The scorpion fish here are huge, and there are lots of nudibranchs, as well as a large variety of fish, some familiar to us like trevallies and triggerfish, and some not so familiar. Temperature was around 16C., not as bad as I had feared, but considerably colder than I’m used to these days. And my wetsuit was flushing a bit, so I felt it worse than Rita. Or perhaps I’m just more of a wimp.

World's biggest sea cave

While we ate lunch, we got a tour of the islands, including a huge sea cave, which easily swallowed our large boat, and had plenty of room for more boats. Some of the arches were also very impressive. The islands themselves are a marine and nature reserve and no-one is allowed to land on the islands, apart from a few scientists. As a result their isolation species have evolved differently, and insects and plants have grown larger.There is a good section on their biodiversity on Dive! Tutukaka’s website.

There used to be Maori inhabitants until around 1820 when there was a massacre there. Afterwards the islands were declared “tapu”, which means sacred, and they have been uninhabited ever since. Again, you can read more about their history on Dive! Tutukaka’s website.

Second dive was at Jan’s Tunnel. We swam out first to a series of pinnacles, before heading back in to the tunnel itself. This leads inside the island and comes up in an open area where the cave roof has fallen in. On our way back out we passed a massive school of tiny fish hiding in the tunnel. There were also some nice moray eels, goat fish and a large grouper. But the topography was what impressed me the most. Yet again, the temperature was what impressed me the least. The hot soup we had when we got back was very well received.

Underneath the Arches...

On the whole I was very impressed with Dive! Tutukaka, and I would dive with them again. Although I might take a drysuit next time! 2 dives with full gear hire cost NZD 225.

So why are they called the Poor Knights? They were named by Captain Cook, and it may have been because they looked like a dead knight lying on his back. But another theory is that from a distance they apparently resembled a bread-based dish called Poor Knights Pudding, which existed around the time of their discovery.

After we got back from the diving, we drove down to Auckland and stayed at the Parnell Inn, and had dinner at a lovely Indian restaurant in Parnell. Another great day.

Must be a slow news day. The newspapers seem to have picked up an old video from You Tube where a great white tears the front off a shark cage containing 2 divers.

The video was posted on 7th November 2007 and was taken on 4th November in Mexico. Apparently it was an accident caused when the shark took a bait hanging by the cage. The shark rolled his eyes back to protect them and then, with his visibility impaired, he got his head stuck in the viewing port of the cage. As he thrashed about trying to free himself he tore the front of the cage off. The 2 dives inside were unharmed. The company operating the shark dive said that there cages were 6 years old and they were planning to upgrade them in the Spring of 2008.

Unfortunately the video has now been removed (unless you want to contact the owner about licencing it), but the story is still on You Tube. You can also read more on the UK’s TimesOnline website. I hesitate to mention it, but The Sun also has a story on it, although in typical Sun style it’s more sensational with a headline about a Shark Attack, which is clearly not the case. You’re better off sticking to the Times’s version.

Thanks to Vinnie for spotting that for me.

Whangarei Falls

Rather belatedly some blog entries relating to my recent trip to New Zealand with Rita.

On Fri 14 November after the traditional last minute panics, I managed to get out of the office and to the Airport Express at 2pm. We’d checked in at the station that morning to save time.  We flew out at 4pm on Singapore Airlines, arriving in Singapore at 7:40. The next leg was a 9pm flight to Auckland. I don’t recall flying Singapore Airlines before, but I’d certainly recommend them. I can’t speak about their value as I used some Star Alliance air miles that I accumulated years ago when I was travelling a bit working for Citibank. The service was great and the air crew were helpful and friendly. I had planned to sleep on the way down so as to be fresh enough to drive when I got to Auckland, but the on board entertainment system and free drinks soon put paid to that idea. So I arrived bleary-eyed in Auckland at 11:50am local time.

We hired a car at the airport from Omega Rental Cars. Our destination was Tutukaka, which is the jumping off point for the Poor Knights, which Cousteau rated as one of the top ten dive sites in the world. Pausing only to take a digital photo of the car (specifically the number plate so I’d be able to remember which one it was), we headed north. We decided to take the pretty route, up the north-west coast before cutting inland and across to the east coast near Whangarei. The weather was great and the scenery better. The countryside around Whangarei looks a lot like Derbyshire where my family is from. Similar hills, green farmland and, bizzarely, dry stone walls. The main difference was that the stone cottages were replaced by wooden houses, but apart from that it all seemed very familiar.

We stopped at the 26 metre high Whangarei falls, and finally arrived at Tutukaka at around 7:30pm. We went posh for the first night by renting a cabin with an en-suite bathroom for NZD 75 at the Tutukaka Holiday Park. Tutukaka is a lovely little, picturesque place with one main street alongside a harbour packed with boats. We had dinner was at the Schnappa Rock, a pub along the waterfront, and right next to Dive! Tutukaka, who we would be diving with on the following day. I chose them because fellow SCDC member Andy Niven dived with them during his visit.

It was a beautiful Spring evening and a good start to the trip.

Great hiking weather in Hong Kong at the moment, so I skipped a dive and went walking instead. Our plan was to walk stage 1 and 2 of the Wilson Trail.

Stage 1 of the Wilson Trail starts just north of Stanley on Stanley Gap Road and you kick off with a climb up the first of the Twins (for Cantopop fans, this one must be Charlene as it’s a bit taller than Gillian). It’s described as very difficult. After the Twins, you climb Violet Hill before dropping down to Parkview where the stage ends. We had a lovely cloudless day and from the second of the Twins, we had a great view of the trail ahead.

Stage 2 starts at Parkview and goes up over Jardine’s Lookout, down and then up the side of the quarry, before turning left and gradually heading downhill to Kornhill. Jardine’s Lookout has some great views over Hong Kong. As you start climbing up to it just after leaving Parkview is a plaque to Sgt. Major John Robert Osborn of the 1st Battalion, The Winnipeg Volunteers, Canadian Army. During the defence of Hong Kong against the Japanese he was killed very near to the spot where the plaque is. He was awarded a Victoria Cross, and part of the citation reads:

Several enemy grenades were thrown which Company Sergeant-Major Osborn picked up and threw back. The enemy threw a grenade which landed in a position where it was impossible to pick it up and return it in time. Shouting a warning to his comrades this gallant Warrant Officer threw himself on the grenade which exploded killing him instantly. His self-sacrifice undoubtedly saved the lives of many others.

You can read the full citation and find out more about him on Wikipedia.

That’s not the only evidence of the war on this section of the trail. Just after climbing the hill by the quarry we came across a boarded up tunnel, but we were able to climb around the boards and since we had torches, we ventured inside. Fairly quickly the tunnel split with a left hand branch running parallel with the contour of the hill. There was another smaller exit, then the roof dropped down a bit, so rather than crawl along the floor we turned our attention to the main branch which had headed straight on. This got a bit narrow, but went for about 40 yards before coming out on the other side of the hillside in a wooded area. Presumably the tunnels were left from the war, but whether they were built by the British or the Japanese is not clear.

Towards the end of stage 2, the trail goes past 2 outdoor kitchens with several rows of stoves. In 1941 Shau Kei Wan was a densely populated area in Hong Kong, and these cooking areas were built to cater for large numbers of people in case of Japanese invasion. However they were never used as Hong Kong fell relatively quickly. It now looks as though some people have turned them into a flower garden, with some nice flowers, and even a cactus, growing in the old stoves.

Stage 1 is 4.8km long and took us 1 hour 55 minutes.

Stage 2 is 6.6km if you go all the way to Yau Tong (via the MTR). If you stop at Kornhill like we did it’s about 4.5km and it took us 2 hours 20 minutes, although that does include the tunnel detour. Temperature: 16-17C. Humidity: 40%.

Good news for Google Earth users, as they now have a layer for Marine Protected Areas available from the Google Earth Outreach site. You can download the relevant file here.  When you open it and zoom in, you can see an icon marking the locations of marine protected areas. Clicking on an icon gives you more detailed information on the specific location.  (You’ll need to download and install Google Earth first).

There are quite a few listed for Hong Kong, but as this is early days, there is very little background information on them yet. Hopefully this will change as the conservation organisations behind this improve the service. But it’s a good start and you can at least see the sizes of the various marine parks established in Hong Kong. For example Hoi Ha Wan is 2.6 sq. km. and Yan Chau Tong is 6.8 sq. km. It does seem to be using a fairly liberal use of the term marine protected area, since Pat Sin Leng and Ma On Shan are both listed, and the last time I climbed them, they were considerably above sea level! But it’s early days.

Once again, you can get the marine protected area layer here.