934 Meters Up

It was the last day in Hong Kong and the last day of our trip. We all got up and did the usual routine. We walked over to CityU and took a two hour course on Chinese Civilization. We watched a video that taught us a bit of Chinese history and culture. After a short break we gathered again to watch our instructor teach us how to properly prepare Chinese tea. I'm not sure I'd have the patience for that kind of preparation, but it was still cool to watch. Next, we had a musical performance by a professor at the university. She played a Qin I think. It was a seven stringed wooden instrument. It was cool to have her play some traditional Chinese music for us. They even brought a singer in to accompany the Qin player in a duet.
We got done early. It was probably only around noon when we finished the class, and the rest of the day was ours. On the way back we stopped at a bakery near the MTD subway station. It was delicious and really cheap. So we ate and quickly got ready to head out to the Big Buddha out on Lantau Island. A group of about seven of us, Jimmie, Greg, Mike, Stephan, Bogdan, Tim, and I, took the MTR to the gondolas that would then take us to the Island. The ride cost $88 HKD, but it was well worth it. The view was great. It was a nice day and you could see everything including the man-made Hong Kong airport, the ocean, and the city skyline. The ride took about twenty minutes.
When we got off the gondola and walked out of the building we could see the Big Buddha towering on top of the mountain. It was huge. We walked over to the stairs, climbed up all 1000 of them, and took some pictures by the giant statue. More important than the Buddha statue was the fact that there were at least two geocaches waiting nearby on the island, or at least we thought they were nearby.
Eventually we found a path that we figured must lead towards the cash, so four of us, Mike, Tim, Bogdan, and I, walked down it all the way to the foot of a mountain. Now, it was a pretty cloudy day so we weren't quite sure how high this mountain went, but it was probably a good idea we didn't know before we started. For a while we wrapped around the mountain on the dirt path and the GPS showed we were on the right track, getting closer. However, once we were about .16 miles away the GPS stopped showing us getting closer. We were still hiking, but going basically just up. It was a tough climb, but it felt so cool being that high in the sky, feeling the clouds mist, and seeing nothing but white all around. The climb took about an hour, just hiking up steep, stone steps. It seemed like the path never ended and you couldn't even see 20 feet in front of you. Finally, we reached the top. It was awesome, you couldn't see the ground, it was just white all around us. There was a temporary shelter at the top as well as a sign that read "Lantau Peak, 934 meters". It felt so good to make it all the way up. Still, we had to find the geocach. It took a good 15 minutes or so but we eventually found it in a crevice between two boulders. It had like three travel bugs inside as well as a China geocoin. We all signed the logbook, took a picture at the official peak, and took a short break on the mountain, but it was getting late so we needed to head down pretty quickly afterwards before it got dark.
We got down with pretty good time but missed our gondola ride home. We ended up just buying some Gatorade and oranges and took a bus home. We were really tired, but it was definitely worth it. It was probably one of the best experiences I had in Hong Kong, maybe even the entire trip. Moral of the story is to get out and find those geocaches because sometimes they'll take you to the coolest places around, especially in foreign countries.