Finger hill is one of the easiest hikes you can do in Hong Kong. It's more suitable for beginners like me. Although, it's not on the main island of Hong Kong. Having said that, it's quite convenient to reach to this hiking trail situated on Peng Chau island. Since, it is one of the outer islands of Hong Kong, your journey would start with riding a ferry from central pier to Peng Chau island. The ferry hardly takes 15-20 minutes to reach this smaller island.
Frequency of ferries is not that bad; you can ride a ferry after every 30 min. A single ferry can carry anywhere around 200-400 passengers. These ferries are well air-conditioned, properly cleaned and neat.
If you don't know what central pier is; it is a central station for all the ferries that takes you to outer islands like Lautau, Lamma, Cheung Chau, Peng Chau and even some of new territories side of Hong Kong like TST. Once you land at the Peng Chau port, you can get this following view while off-boarding the ferry.
Peng Chau is relatively smaller island compared to other outer islands across Hong Kong. One good thing about Peng Chau is all the navigation signs around the island that helps you roam freely without much worry about the getting lost (obviously rare to happen since its smaller size!). You get to experience the lifestyle of islanders closely while walking around the tiny-tiny lanes.
After following the navigation signs and walking for another 5 min, you should come to following spot that will lead you to the finger hill trail. This trail is a combination of stairs, concrete pathways and natural walkways.
Once you start walking in the direction of trail, soon you will get to the initial section of the trail with set of stairs as below;
What we witness was most of the locals were hiking this trail late afternoon (maybe post their lunch and other routine activities) by the time we had hiked and on our way back climbing down these stairs. Since, this trail is a short one can be a quick exercise for anyone who wants to do a power hike (cardio). Usually, one side of the trail has a view to admire while the other is filled with large trees and bushes.
Trail gives you some nice view points on the way before reaching the hill top as can be seen below;
The trail further follows a concrete route surrounded by lush green bushes on one side while some random sculptures made out of stones on the other. You will still notice some houses of islanders along the trail on one side up to this point.
After walking for another 5 min you come to a trail that's piercing through the bushes and you feel like walking in a garden (rather forest as its super quiet and bushy).
Like I mentioned before, this trail is super simple and easy to navigate. Soon you come to the first checkpoint of the trial where you have 2 choices what you want to explore. 1st option (left side) is to hike to the Finger hill top while 2nd one (right side) is to get to a smaller beach with nice views at the basement of the island.
We took the left turn here. Now, this is where you reach the most challenging part of the trail (which is not that challenging compared to other trails!) of climbing a set of 100 odd stairs with a slope that gets steeper gradually (again not that steep though). Here is starts...
Keep climbing...
You keep walking and soon you get to a section these stairs above from where you get a nice view of the ocean surrounding the island and also nearby smaller islands at a distance as can be seen below;
Keep further climbing and now you can start seeing the hill top from a distance...
Soon you will reach top of the finger hill and get to know that it's actually quite a small place as can be seen in below picture. There is a decent sitting place with a shed and also couple of benches to accommodate more people if required. It also gives a high level map of the island and different routes to descend the hill.
Also, I have seen better views than what I got to witness from this place. Not that the view wasn't amazing but I wouldn't count it in my must see viewpoints across Hong Kong (if I compare to something like 'Jardine's lookout').
After reaching here, we realised that there is another way too to climb the mountain and reach at above place. This another route basically goes to the other side of the island and also connects to the beach (that I mentioned before as 'right turn' before taking the stairs). So we started descending the hill using another route to explore other things we haven't come across.
After walking down for few minutes, above staircase leads to a concrete road that keeps going down and in the end takes you to the only beach that is famous on Peng Chau island. Having said that, it is not really a big beach but gives you a nice place to sit back, relax and enjoy the atmosphere.
Beach provides couple of nice spots to get feeds for your Instagram walls but just be a but careful with the water since there are no safety measures. You get a clear view of the ocean that spans until horizon from a naked eye.
Another side (right side) of beach basically has lots of rocks along the shore lying right next to the mountain. It provides a nice place to sit and watch the waves. Definitely a soothing place to spend some quality time with your loved ones.
After enjoying a short stay at this beach, you can take the same route to go back to the Peng Chau pier. There is a shortcut in between though which you can recognise while climbing back the road you just descended. After taking that route, you come to the same spot where you had started in first place while choosing the stairs to climb the Finger hill. See the below checkpoint;
When you comeback from the beach; you basically come from the right side of the checkpoint while left side is leading back to the Finger hill top. Overall it took us close to couple of hours to enjoy the whole trail from start to finish including climbing the hill, visiting the beach and coming back to the Peng Chau pier.
Hope you liked this brief post giving details of the Finger hill hiking trail and what to expect while going there. Do share your comments and experiences while hiking here. Happy hiking!
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