Frozen Fate: A Hike to Kerachut Beach

last weekend, two of my collegues and i went for a hike to Kerachut beach in Penang. to the uninitiated, Kerachut beach is situated inside Penang's National Park, at the Teluk Bahang area, north-west tip of penang isle. yes, there is a national park on the teeny penang island, albeit the smallest national park in the whole of malaysia.

to get to kerachut beach, one has to either take a 1.5 hour hike through the forest, or for those who would rather not sweat it out, can hire a boat to ferry them there. us three, being the young, healthy guys that we are, brave the forest trail journey, of course :p

the trail starts from the entrance of the national park, where one has to register before starting their journey. the jetties of the teluk bahang fishing village are located here. after a short walk past the suspension bridge, the trail branches into two paths - the right side leads to the Muka Head lighthouse, while the left trail leads to our destination for the day. muka head's trail appears to be much longer than kerachut beach's trail... may be back to explore it on another day.

the trail consist of mostly uphill climbs on the first half, and more downhills on the latter journey. along the trail, one can observe that many of the large trees are tagged with the species name. very informative indeed... not that i care :p

after roughly one and a half hour of ~~self-torture~~ hike, we reached kerachut beach - with the jetty a welcoming place for a rest and to enjoy the sea breeze. quick check for jellyfish: yikes, there's a lot of em... thankfully, they don't come too near to the beach, so we can still go into the water.

an eagle and another large bird was circling around overhead amidst the clear blue sky while i was in the water, without my camera obviously. sigh... there goes a good photo opportunity.

the beach's sand here are a little on the chunky side though - i think they're qualified to be called extra small pebbles instead. there's no way anyone can build a sand castle here, as the sands don't stick to each other due to the large sand particles. and our feet sinks a few inch into the sand with each step that we took on the beach, as the sands shift around; making walking around the beach a good workout indeed.

and there's a meromictic lake here too, technically a lake with two distinct layer of water - where the lower layer is warm, salty sea water, while the upper layer is cool fresh water fed from the surrounding streams. there's not much water in the so-called lake while we're there though.