As most of us are finally getting over jet lag and slowly understanding HK’s train system, we have been immersed with the city life for the past week. But today, we left the urban setting behind. We met in the lobby at 9 am, per usual, hopped on a charter bus and set route to Dragon’s Back trail and Big Wave Bay on Hong Kong Island. I have been looking forward to this excursion ever since we got our itinerary and after one Google image search… I was sold. 

Dragon’s Back trail is approximately a 5-mile hike in the mountains of the island. The scorching sun accompanied us and we were all drenched in our sweat within seconds. The first part of the trail is all incline under the sun, but when we got to the middle part of the hike, we were at the top and overlooked Shek O beach. It was a breath-taking view! Shek O beach is a more private, wealthy location with a golf course all around. Very important and famous people have lived there and still do. The last part of the trail was through the Hong Kong forest, so it was more of a peaceful walk with various waterfalls in between, which is what we needed by that time.

We were extremely exhausted at the end, but we accomplished the trail together for the first time. Over 18,000 steps were calculated by Dorothy’s fitbit! Calculating our steps each day has been shocking and so funny. (Admissions forgot to give us PE units for this program). Then we spent time at Big Wave beach where we enjoyed a traditional Hong Kong barbecue. We had two grills going, one for the traditional BBQ and the other for a Western BBQ with a grill rack on top that some students took the initiative to cook for the rest of us. And by traditional, I mean we each cooked our own meat with skewers over the fire. We ate beef, pork, chicken, meatballs, fish balls, lobster balls and of course, marshmallows. It was a lunch WELL deserved.