Fun in the sun at Long Dong

Today we spent most of the day out at the coast at Long Dong. Long Dong is pretty popular, every parking space along the little street leading off the main road down to the beach was already taken when we got there a little after 10 am. That wasn’t a problem for us though since we could squeeze the bike in easily enough. Down on the beach there were plenty of people and the amount increased as the day went by, but it was never so full that it felt crowded.

Here in the north east there are very few sand beaches, it’s mostly cliffs and large rocks all along the coast. Long Dong is no different, it’s a stretch of coast strewn with boulders and a couple of cliffs dropping off almost vertically into the sea. 

I think there are several reasons why this particular part of the coast is more popular than other, similar looking ones. For one thing, people have set up several climbing routes on the cliffs at the rear of the beach. For two, the underwater landscape is quite beautiful and several scuba diving companies have set up shop in the vicinity. For three, there are several cliffs jutting out from the water that from a little shielded lagoon. The channel between the biggest of these little islets and the main land is deep enough that you can safely jump from the cliff top into the sea.  I do indeed like climbing and so does Renegade Wife, but you have to bring your own ropes, which we don’t have, and you need to know the routes, which we don’t. Instead we opted for snorkelling and playing in the water. 

The under water landscape is almost as beautiful as the landscape above the surface, with plenty of cliffs and boulders, and schools of tropical fish in all colors swimming about in the clear water or hiding in the nooks and crannies. Snorkeling around and exploring the under water landscape was really nice. Jumping from the cliffs was also very fun, as the cliffs are just high enough for it to be exhilarating. 

The bad thing about Long Dong is that there’s very little shade and after a few hours we were starting to feel the heat so we left the beach to check out some of the surrounding landscape. 

There are plenty of little hiking trails up on the cliffs above the coast road and we randomly selected on called Bitou Cape trail that, like the name indicates, goes out on the nearby cape jutting out into the ocean. This whole area is very verdant and the surroynding moutains are covered in green almost all the way down to the water. It makes for a very stunning landscape and both the Wife and I kept taking photos all along the way.

When we came down from the trail we were pretty tired after a day of activity, so we headed back to the hostel. None too soon too, because later in the evening it started raining heavily. The weekend has been too short, tomorrow we have to head home.