Today we got up early to catch a ferry out to Dongao Island. There are over a hundred islands in the waters off the coast of Zhuhai, and ferries run out to several of them for easy day trips. The ferry we took stopped at Guishan Island, which is the largest of them and unloaded a few people before heading out to Dongao. From my brief glimpse of Guishan it looked fairly well populated, and there were cranes everywhere suggesting that it's under fairly heavy development. As it's only about a 50 minute ferry ride from Zhuhai I can see it being a reasonable place to live even if you worked in Zhuhai. Possibly a spot for a vacation home for the well-to-do as well, though I don't know if that's a common practice here or not.
The waters around Guishan were pretty calm this morning, and not a lot of spray was hitting the window, but this just meant that previous day's water had dried into a heavy salt film on the window. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to go outside, so I wasn't able to get any pictures on the way there. It was a shame too because there were what appeared to be very large eagles fishing in the harbour at Guishan and I would have loved to try getting a picture of them.
A few people on the ferry were packing fishing equipment, so that must be a popular option at Dongao, but we were there just to enjoy the natural beauty, which was in abundance. There's a very long path that goes around the outside of the island.
It also detours into the jungle a little bit too.
Oh, and there was some lovely sand under this rock, so I just lifted it up for a moment.
The humidity hasn't really abated since we've been here, and today was no exception to that rule, so it was a pretty sweaty walk. Still, there was a terrific cool breeze coming in off the ocean which helped a lot, and Euphy had the foresight to bring a few bottles of water, so we had a pretty comfortable walk. It's a great place to just wander around, and despite a brief encounter with a tour group that was acting like a gaggle of noisy idiots you'd really think we had the place to ourselves. It wasn't all sweeping coastline and lush forest either. After the British occupied Kowloon in the 1800s the Chinese moved their customs station to Dongao, and the ruins of the old customs house and the forts that protected it are still evident.
Okay, one more stunning vista then I'll move on.
It was a fair hike from where we started, but we came to a pretty nice beach.
I'd brought my swimsuit with me, but by the time I got to the beach I wasn't really feeling like a swim. I didn't bring a towel, and since this wasn't a commercialized beach there weren't the sort of amenities you find at beach resorts such as a shower to wash the salt off. As much as it was nice to NOT see those things spoiling the natural beauty, it did keep me out of the water. Apparently someone is way ahead of me on that line of thought though, because just behind that beach (mostly out of camera) is a major construction project. It wasn't long before we came to a road that connects that building site to the main port. Turns out that they're building a huge beach resort on that site, and another one at a nearby beach is already well under way and slated for completion next year.
It'll be an amazing vacation spot when it's done, and a lovely way to enjoy the beautiful island in comfort, but I still couldn't help but feel really lucky that I was able to see the island before the resorts are complete and there are a lot more visitors there.
We actually went down to the beach that has a nearly complete resort on it. It was kind of cool to see a resort beach as a work-in-progress like that. Of course, it's not really a resort beach until there's a white guy acting like a tool on it.
There you go guys, NOW you've got a beach resort. You're welcome.
There's already a shuttle service operating along the road from the port to the beaches that are spawning hotels, and we were pretty tired after walking there, so we hopped on one to get back to the port area. We grabbed lunch at a restaurant by the water and just chilled out for a couple hours in the area until the ferry home arrived.
The seas were noticeably rougher on the way home, and the window by my seat was catching a lot of spray, which kept it free of salt build-up, but also kept a constant stream of water blurring the view outside. Still, after our return stop at Guishan the rivulets of water settled down just long enough for me to snap this shot:
It's really interesting being on the water around the Zhuhai/Macao/Hong Kong area. Everywhere you look there are ships! Everything from huge cargo ships to tiny one-man fishing vessels. That shot above is representative of what was out the window for the entire ferry ride. It's pretty amazing really. I'd heard that Hong Kong is the busiest port in the world, but it's hard to really grasp that concept until you're out there seeing for yourself just how much traffic there really is on the seas in that area.
Dusk was settling in by the time we got back to Zhuhai, and we headed out for dinner right from the ferry port. The trip to Dongao made for a full day, and it was a great excursion for a less urban taste of the Zhuhai area. It's been a great day, and I hope you're all doing well back home as well. Talk to you again tomorrow!
3 comments:
Sounds like a fun day trip.
How many thousands of pictures are you up to so far? I have a feeling the slide show will be quite long.
Wow! What a beautiful place. Having a hard time getting my head around China and "tropics".
I've surpassed 2000 pictures taken, but only 1977 of those are keepers so far. Still got a couple of days to get me over the 2k mark! You're right though Jay, it's going to be a real issue trying to show these pictures to anyone, there are just too many. I may have to have a separate "best of" collection for general consumption, otherwise going through these will be a day trip in itself.
The tropical nature of Southern China isn't something we see a lot of, but it's very much here and it's really marvellous to see.
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