Many people did not realise that we also have a national park in Penang. It is one of the smallest national park in Malaysia. So, on the second day of Chinese New Year, we took a hike in the Penang National Park to Pantai Keracut. What will be a better way to spend Chinese New Year after so much of ‘glorious’ food the days before!
This place is at Teluk Pahang and the the track start near the ‘End of the World’ seafood restaurant. It’s a smooth walk of about 500m into the trail leading to Pantai Keracut or to Muka Head.
The hike took about 1 1/2 hour to Pantai Keracut. It’s not a though hike, though the beginning was a bit tedious as there are a lot of steps to begin with.
45 minutes into the hike, the trail will level off and you will pass through a place called Bukit Belah. Along the way, there are many pavilions (7 in total) created for hikers to take a rest.
Once you reached, you will be greeted with the sight of a meromictic lake one of the 19 around the world. Here in this lake, salt water and fresh water are joints. The denser salt water will be at the bottom while the fresh water will be on the top, forming double layer lake.
Sand here are very white and hot during afternoon. It’s also soft and makes it very hard to walk. However, the sunny day is a very nice time for taking picture.
Walk around the place you will find more places to take picture.
The beach is very nice and not too deep for you to wallow in. Along the beach also, you can find a look of starfishes.
As you walk along, you will also come across jellyfishes. There are found to be abundant at Pantai Keracut making it a not suitable place for swimming or water sport activities.
However, unknown to many, Pantai Keracut is also the place to see turtle. This place have been gazetted as a turtle sanctuary. The abundance of jellyfishes as the primary source of food makes it a haven for turtle. Many green turtles are known to lay eggs here.
There is a research station and ranger station to take care of the sanctuary and to prevent poaching by various people who collect the eggs to be sold.
Although this is not the season for turtles to lay egg, we manage to find a few cordoned off areas which is actually sites where turtles has lay eggs.
After that, more picture taking at the beach.
Some artistic picture, and some not so but random…but happy picture.
Some scenery from the turtle sanctuary too..
And some cam-whoring time too…
After about an hour plus or so, we decided it’s too hot to remain at the beach and decided to head back. We actually decided to get a boat to go back and paid the boatman RM100 for the 9 of us.
The journey is a very pleasant and it only took about 15 minutes to go back. Along the way the boatman stop at various places to show us the various beaches, flora, fauna and interesting structures!
Eagle’s nest on top of a tree…we saw quite a number of it.
Some rock formation which this suppose to look like a turtle…
and the crocodile or buaya darat….!
Floating chalet which you can rent for RM110 a night for fishing.
Overall, we enjoyed the journey and a good break from the normal routine of Chinese New Year of visiting relatives and eating non-stop. Do visit this place before it’s heritage is lost.
No comments:
Post a Comment