It’s a public holiday today – the snappily entitled ‘Establishment
Day’ for when HK was handed back to China – meaning we have a lazy day to
recover from a pretty epic junk trip yesterday.
It was a cracking trip, great bunch of people (hats off to
Rach Morgan, whose birthday junk it was) and an absolute scorcher. Despite
wearing loads of sun cream, we ended up pretty sunburnt…
However, I won’t go on about the trip, as I’m aware it’s a
bit like my running-related posts – once I’ve described one trip, I’ve
described them all: 6 hours on the boat, stop near a beautiful beach, everyone
swam to it and played silly games, much diving in, return to town in a bus, out
in Wan Chai to dance like idiots for about 3 hours solid. Fantastic fun, not
much new to report.
So instead, take a look at the Giants Causeway-esque rocks
above. It was so clear and we sailed such a long way out from Sai Kung in the
northeast of HK that we had plenty of chance to scrutinise the rocky islands
around the bay. Among the many nice new people we met yesterday was a chap
called Pierre, who filled us in on why the bay looks the way it does with a
spot of geographical history.
He was already winning in the ‘Interesting person’ stakes on
the boat. When you do the standard introductions in HK, the response to ‘What
do you do?’ 90% of the time is: bank; law firm. Pierre’s response was toy
maker. Toy maker! His current project is zombie pens, being manufactured by 3D
printer in China…
But this fact established, what was most interesting was
what he told me next - he spoke enthusiastically and at length about why the
rocks and the bay look as they do. We were sailing over an ancient Supervlocano
crater, it turns out. It was apparently 20 by 30 miles in size, and all the islands
arrayed in a broadly circular shape around where the crater was are made up of
ancient volcanic ask. Hence why you get fascinating rock formations like this
one; and lots of tiny, picturesque islands to sail around and swim to.
I can’t think of a way to conclude this or make a
joke/volcano-based pun…just thought that was pretty interesting. So you can
just have that tidbit of info, entirely free.
You’re welcome.
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