An absolutely awesome paddle over the weekend with a total of 140km paddled over two days, taking about 8 hours going there and 6.5 hours returning to Hong Kong (the difference due to currents). We paddled past the south of Lamma Island, Cheung Chau Island, Lantau Island and several other islands. At some points, there were thousands and thousands of fish jumping in and out of the water as we cruised along. Beautiful stuff!
Passport control was taken care of way before hand. A lot of work goes on behind the scenes with such cross-border expeditions. One of my teammates had first taken our passports to Hong Kong immigration to ‘check us out’ of Hong Kong. On arriving in Macau, she gave a call to Macau immigration upon which they sent two immigration officers to the sea school where we landed to come and stamp our passports. Easy. The reverse happened when we left Macau to return to Hong Kong.
The hot and humid weather on both days made the challenge even more challenging. As a tired me saw the ferries going to and from Macau speeding by us while paddling, thoughts of “Now THAT should be the correct way of doing it!” went through my mind. Trust me, by the 6th hour you’re pretty much toast. But nah, I wouldn’t have traded the weekend’s experience for a ferry ticket. Tis definitely one of my best paddling experiences to date!