A Stumble upon the Sam Cha Cave

The original plan of the day was to hike the general areas of Hong Kong east, namely, Mount Butler, Mount Parker or the Quarry Pass area.  We began at Nam Fung Sun Tsuen but that was the last thing we knew.  Some wrong ways here and there, and we stumbled upon this “sign,” (perhaps more accurate to say a note on a rock) which says Sam Cha Cave.

We were still early in our hike and therefore we marched onto an upward path that clearly was a result of hikers’ treading.  There were ribbons all along indicating the way.  Soon we realized that we were climbing up a small hill.

There were times that we had to go on all fours climbing up this path.  But too late to go back, the slope was so steep that it would have been too dangerous to head back down the same path.

Perhaps about more than 30-40 minutes later, we finally came upon the Sam Cha Cave.  As the name suggests, there should be three openings to this cave (“sam” means three).  We found the first opening, went inside for a quick run, and came out on another opening.  It was cool inside (in terms of temperature).  Yet it was also a bit eerie.

We came out and walked further to find another opening.  I believe that we did see all three openings of the Sam Cha Cave.

And indeed, this is a very large cave with diverging paths inside.  I have read on the blogs that some of these caves were so abandoned that they became homes to bats.  As keen as I am to seeing war structure ruins, I cringed in hearing the mention of bats.

The Sam Cha Cave, like a number of other caves in this general area of Hong Pak Country Trail, was not a natural cave.  The Japanese military dug these caves during the Japanese Occupation years.  They forced the villagers to dig them for defense purposes and as bomb shelters, in case the allied forces launch a counter attack to retake Hong Kong.

Now that we have seen the caves, what do we do?  We knew that it would be too dangerous to descend this hill on the same path.  We decided to keep on climbing, hoping for a more merciful exit.  After climbing up to the top of the hill, we saw the ribbons again.  And some more walk later, we heard people talking.  We were so relieved.  We followed the direction of those human sounds, and found the way back to Hong Pak Country Trail proper.

Fellow hikers told us the way to head back to Nam Fung Sun Tsuen.  We stopped by a high point to savor this view.

It turns out that we did miss an intersection and so we ended up in Shau Kei Wan.  But being back in civilization was surely a very good thing.  It was perhaps too adventurous of a day.