Distance: 11.04 km
Time: 2:19 hr
Elevation gain: 366 m
Elevation loss: 344 m
On day one, we finished the first of 10 sections of the MacLehose trail. We were only able to finished the first one as we had a late start. We packed all of our stuff in our hotel in the morning and were only missing white gas for our MSE whisperlite stove. Man, was this a journey to get this... We went to 10 different outdoor stores (e.g. Protect, RCI,...)and although all of them carried the stove, did not sell any white gas. Due to the limited English skills, we also did not get a clear answer where we could buy it. Eventually, we found a small stretch that had a few very tiny repair shops and we ended up buying lighter gas in a beer bottle for 12HKD, that was a good deal, but it took us over 2 hours to finally find something.
Once we go off the bus at the trail head, we were on our way on the first section at 3:20pm. The trail was along a road most of the time. This road had some car traffic and all people driven by us looked very surprised at us. I guess it is not a common sight to see two westerners hiking with full backpacks in the backside of Hong Kong. Along the trail you get some food views over the Pacific and the High Island reservoir. At the beginning the trail was going up a bit and flattened out until the end. For the last part, you had to ascend one more small mountain before descending via stairs to the campsite lying directly at the beach.
Once we made it to the campsite, there were about 7 tents already set up. I think we were the ones that set up our tents the latest, as we arrived at the campsite at 5:40pm. The campsite is directly at the beach which is really nice, but also just by a rehabilitation clinic, which was kind of strange. The people that camped there were younger and most of them probably hiked to the beach to relax for a night.
At some point during dinner, cows walked into the campground, but the local campers quickly shooed them away ;-) We had Ramen for dinner, as we'll have everyday for the next five days. Regarding facilities on the campground, there were no assigned spots, it is just first come first serve. There is one porta pottie which was barely usable as it was stinking a lot, there is no water (keep that in mind when coming there), but there are garbage cans.
It was starting to rain a little bit and we went to bed. As we bought a Hong Kong sim card before to be able to have access to Internet once in a while, we were able to receive the news about Trump being elected, kind of ruined our day for a bit.
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