The Final Hike

Another day, another hike. This time round, a couple of friends and I are heading to Dragon’s back trail. This is one of the most easily accessible trails for Hong Kong University students since it is located on Hong Kong Island where the university is. All you have to do in order to get there is to first take the subway for 10 stops and then ride a bus for approximately 20 minutes. Despite my apparent thrill for hikes (that I believe has been quite obvious throughout this blog), there was another reason why my friends and I wanted to go on a hike today. That is because protests were beginning to take over the University and classes had been canceled for the day. More details on this topic will be talked about in a future blog.

This trail was quite easy to traverse in the beginning. There weren’t many people along the way (probably because it was noon on a normal weekday) and there were many small hills throughout the hiking path. In fact, we soon realized how the trail got its name. All those little hills across the way gave the impression of a Chinese dragon’s wavy back going up and down all the time. The view was once again terrific as we had a direct view on the South China sea which was basically inviting us to swim in it. After a few hours of trekking, we reached a small village where a very popular beach is situated. The beach is called “Big Wave beach” and as you can imagine, it is a beach where you can usually find quite large waves. Many surfers often come here in order to ride those giant waves. Nevertheless, the waves this time were not big at all, so we didn’t the hype.

Unfortunately, at some point in the evening, we heard that many bus and subway lines would be closing down for the day as the protests were beginning to get out of hand. This was the point during my Hong Kong trip that I first felt that the protests were finally beginning to affect, to a significant level, my experience as an exchange student. For that reason, we decided to head back early and witness the situation firsthand. The things we saw in the coming days are whole different stories that I feel obliged to share…