Hiking in Hong Kong

There are a lot of hikes in Hong Kong.  Some long, some short.  Some paved, some not.  Many with beautiful views.  Yesterday I went on my first hike.  I'm not exactly sure how long the hike was.  For most of it we stayed on a paved path and saw plenty of other hikers.  We went off the paved path for a bit onto a dirt path with quite a few steps climbing up the mountain. We only saw one other hiker on this path.  This particular hike was by the Tai Tam Reservoir.  It started just a short distance from our house.  We did drive and park close to the trail head.  It is difficult to walk to the trail head because there are very narrow parts of the road with no sidewalk.  I did not take my dogs because I was in someone else's car and I was concerned that it is still a little too hot for them.

I learned a few things on the hike.  First, there are snakes in Hong Kong, lots of them, and many are poisonous.  We did not see any yesterday, although we heard one.  The woman I hiked with, Mary, has seen plenty in her 21 years here, but only knows of a handful of incidences where someone was bit.  She said that the good news is that if you are bit, as long as you can get to the hospital within 3-4 hours they do have all of the anti venom.  Somewhat comforting.  Two of the poisonous types are the bamboo snake and the cobra.

Apparently the bamboo snake is very aggressive.  Mary said that she and her husband came upon one a couple of weekends ago in the middle of the trail.  Despite their walking up and people approaching from the other direction, the snake would not move.  PJ told me that the boys on the baseball team told him that they went into the batting cages for practice once and found a cobra in there.  I think I like hiking in Hawaii!

There are also poisonous spiders...and they are big!  We did see the banana spider yesterday, actually we saw about 10 of them with their webs spun across the trail.

I hope that you can get an idea of the size of this spider from the picture.  Mary nearly walked into the first one we came upon.  After that we were looking up and down!  I will take one of my hiking sticks on my next hike to knock down any webs.  Mary did say that she has been told the mouth of the banana spider is too small to really bite a person.  I will say I am a little concerned about hiking with my dogs.  Once again, I think I like hiking in Hawaii!!

On the bright side, here are some of the beautiful views from our hike.

Turtles and fish in the reservoir