My highland goat
I am le tired.
Yesterday we went hiking. I was quite happy to go. Mum made it sound as if we'd be roughing it like she did in her camp days (according to her stories) up Lantau Island and sleeping in 'cow shit' huts (which I found out later were not made of cow shit but had been shat in by the cows which have since disappeared).
Then I hated it.
I got up the mountain ok. Mum packed our three bags pretty light considering we had enough food for the thirty or so people there to hotpot dinner, breakfast and morning tea. And have excess food to lug home as well. I am not exaggerating. For these people, a day out hiking is for weight gain rather than loss. And with the hotpot we had four burners, pots, and a dozen cans of butane. I don't understand how a group that's supposedly had thirty years of experience camping and hiking could so grossly overestimate our need for supplies.
Eve and I reached the hovels in which we were staying in about an hour and a half. Then the damnable sense of altruism and obedience mixed with boredom dragged us halfway back down the trail to serve as the pack mules for the 'older' members of the pack who had 'taken ill' somewhere along the journey. The idea was to remove half the weight of their backpacks to share the load; divide and conquer the gravitational force which prevented the tail of the group from reaching shelter before nightfall. Then some old bag of an aunty slips hers off as I reach them, out of breath, and tells my mother that I can carry it for her because I'm such a lovely specimen of a daughter. Bitch.
I should've stopped at the leaders of the stragglers. One girl was actually sick (fucked if I know why she'd agree to come when she had to take six different pills [four different colours; three different shapes] three times a day on a full stomach [Chinese doctors are such quacks...]) so I figured if I had to help anybody I'd do her. Pack. Take her pack. But I just had to keep going down the steps. I could go downhill for days; it's the up that messes with me. Oh, and also, the jeans were a bad idea. My iliopsoas muscles have decided to drop out of the hip flexor group and today I looked more like a double amputee with rather nice prosthetics than the fine specimen of a daughter from yesterday.
The hovels we stayed in were something like you'd see in an old Chinese ghost film. Skinny doors, no lights, questionable building materials. The sort of place you really hope not to have a psychotic episode but is ten times as likely to stimulate one. They really weren't so bad once we got the windows and doors closed and the butane and LED lights hung up. It was positively cosy with the hotpot going. A little too cosy... We had two hovels and pitched two (unused) tents full of people sleeping on any flat surface they could access and yet they all piled into our hut with the large tables weighed down with cans of explosive gas and hissing fires and boiling water and WMD grade salmonella meat.
Night time was a taxing affair. I did not know that there would be children. Oh how I hate children. The older sister (11) wasn't so bad. I let her play with my hair whilst I was dealing for Big 2 cos then she'd at least be quiet and cease kicking the guy we were playing with (I think she has a crush). The younger brother (8) was unbearable. He's like Brendan, except with ADHD and without all his questions. Any surface we wanted to play on would be sequestered at irregular intervals and he just would not shut up. I don't like children.
I think we went a bit crazy with the Big 2. I think we went a bit crazy. Eve and I played with a girl we knew from before, a younger girl we couldn't remember who may have been a bit clingy but was as good as one could hope for in the circumstances, and the son of the woman who thought I was a pack mule. I'd've pushed her off the cliff given a chance in the dead of night, but the boy was a riot and may have become psychologically damaged if he lost his mother in a hiking accident, which would dampen his entertainment qualities. We played from 8 'til 12 for want of anything else to do. Then we played in the morning between packing and hiking around the mountain peaks and eating. Then we played at the end of the hiking trail as we waited for the old ones to catch up. In that last instance, we fit in 18 rounds before the bulk of the group arrived (we were counting because we were betting how many we could fit in). We also played at the restaurant where we had lunch, waiting for the curry to arrive. I think there was an Aussie tourist family there. They spoke in crass accents. It was around about then that we thought maybe we'd played as much big two as we could stand - for, say, the rest of the decade.
I won my fair share of games, but I did not win the hand in which I had a Big 2 (2 of spades) straight flush, but I did not care. I just had to play it. Evelyn was steamrollering the others near the end when I'd reverted to dealer for want of a speck of peace. I think the HK kids think Aussie-raised kids are habitual gamblers.
The sunrise almost made the whole trip worth it, kids and all (the kids weren't awake then). We were swimming in a sea of fog and clouds and it blew over us like poetry and fairy floss. The other hovels along the mountain were fading in and out of view with the clouds flowing between us and it is an experience watching a nearby hilltop becoming enveloped in lumpy, wispy grey and white like a marshmallow volcano. The actual sunrise was uneventful due to the dense cloud and smog and whatnot between us and the horizon blocking out the egg yolk we were so rearing to spot. I actually haven't been able to see the horizon since arriving in Hong Kong through all the smog. At around eightish, we had a sunrise over the line of clouds (way way way above the horizon) and the adults were reduced to fits of hysterical adoration and spirituality, probably because we had such a disappointing astronomical sunrise.
We trekked around to the highest points we could reach (a weather station and some rocks about half a kilometre away from sleepy) and the 360 degree view was cool at the time, but in hindsight I find myself embarrassed by the tourism advertisement clichés I may or may not have displayed and/or requested.
On the climb down, I sprained my ankle even before we got to the trail. But most of the descent was easy. We even went through foresty bits and admired the puddly remnants of waterfalls. Oh, how I would've liked to see a flash flood. The second half or more was made up of stairs. It is here that I take back the notion I had earlier that I could go downhill indefinitely. Giant stairs with a gradient of 2 are not so good. I wanted to build a slide to get down all those fernormous steps that just kept going and going and going and going for ever and ever and ever... I'm just glad we didn't pick that side of the mountain as the ascending route. In comparison, I applaud the planning of this venture.
We caught a bus home. Two buses, really. It took a lot longer than I expected and my foot made me one crabby Patty on the way home. But it's all bound up now and happy (just as long as I ignore it and don't move). I am tired.
Oh yeah, I missed a day before. I was sick and getting my identity card. Fingerprints, I ask you. Gattaca! Gattaca! Gattaca!
6x