Contact Info
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69 King's Rd, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong
Seventy percent of Hong Kong's land area is countryside. Forty percent is designated country park. More than half of its coastline is backed by mountains, forests, and protected wilderness that the city has, remarkably, stubbornly, refused to consume. This is not the Hong Kong of popular imagination, of harbor skylines and neon density and the relentless vertical ambition of its streets. And that is precisely, entirely why it matters. The Green Spine Circuit is Cruivantara's nature-first experience: a full-day voyage along the coastal boundary where Hong Kong's extraordinary built world ends and its vast, green, breathing silence begins.
Departing from Sai Kung Town, the eastern gateway to the highly biodiverse and geologically remarkable stretch of Hong Kong's entire coastline, the vessel moves immediately and purposefully into the marine zone of Sai Kung East Country Park. The geography here was forged by a volcanic eruption over 140 million years ago, and the hexagonal rock columns that line the cliff faces are among the highly visually arresting geological formations in the whole of East Asia. The vessel moves slowly through these waters. There is no other appropriate speed.
Mid-morning, the route reaches the eastern seawall of the High Island Reservoir, a structure that in the 1970s enclosed an entire sea inlet to create a freshwater reservoir, one of Hong Kong's highly audacious and quietly extraordinary feats of engineering. Beyond the seawall, open-water passages take you through a succession of uninhabited islands, each one distinct in character, each one carrying the particular quality of silence that belongs only to places that have never been built upon. The afternoon anchor stops at Pak Lap Wan, a bay reachable by no road, accessible by no path, open only to those who arrive by sea, offers a seclusion so complete it feels nearly implausible within one of Asia's densely populated territories.
A resident geologist and marine naturalist are aboard throughout the entire voyage, available not for scheduled talks alone but for the kind of ongoing, unhurried conversation that a full day at sea actually allows. Snorkeling equipment is provided at all anchor stops. Detailed plant and wildlife identification guides are available throughout. Lunch is a whole-food, nature-inspired menu featuring locally foraged coastal herbs, light, considered, and entirely in keeping with the day surrounding it.
Nature lovers, geology enthusiasts, hikers, curious families, and travelers determined to find the side of Hong Kong that a majority of people miss entirely.
The Sai Kung volcanic geopark carries UNESCO Global Geopark designation, one of the highly significant geological recognitions on earth. A majority of the people who live in Hong Kong have never seen it from the water. This cruise exists to change that.
