Monday 11th Jan

An early rise start with free pancakes and packing began the day. I managed to get some washing done and we checked out in time. Lisa and I then sat down together and decided we really ought to start doing some planning for the week ahead considering we only had somewhere to stay for the next two nights and had nothing else booked. I got online and booked us an explorer bus trip ($40 each) for the next day which would give us a hop on hop off experience to explore some main highlights of the blue mountains in the Katoomba area. Unfortunately for us, the Katoomba website (which is supposed to be the better park for international travellers) said it was fully booked and they didn't email back to our enquiry until after we had already booked Blackheath (the more family based site up in the mountains popular for bush walks). This means we are a train stop away from Katoomba where we will have to be at 9.45am so an early night it will be. I asked my friend Sara if it would be ok we went by and saw her and Lauren for Wednesday night and was all confirmed fine. We were both very giggly trying to make decisions and being useless with Lisa mistakingly searching camper van sites in Newcastle - UK instead of Oz, and then finding what she thought would be a nice site for us to stay at to then realise it's for the over 50's only....and I was reading about the concerns of many deaths of people getting lost on the bush walks.

After a brief chat with Jamie's fella Sam (who kindly put our luggage in the staff room so we didn't have to pay for lockers), we continued on with our day mission to get to the infamous Bondi Beach. This involved a train and bus trip so was further than manly beach and when we arrived it was a beautiful setting and we realised why it was so popular with many surfers. We lay in the sun for a short while before needing to the station for instructions onto the next place, get back to the hostel and grab some lunch. We decided to eat at the 'Incafe' next door and were alarmed to see a fire engine pull up and men run into the hostel (Sam looked alarmed), but it seemed to be nothing so was ok. Our nice lunch was then brought to a sharp finish when Travelwheels (who we were picking the camper van up) emailed Lisa to say they close at 4pm. This was at 2.50pm and it takes 45mins on a bus to get there. As you can imagine we jumped up in a fluster, grabbed our bags off Sam and even forgot the food we'd bought which sadly was left up in the kitchen.

Arriving at our bus stop, we took a chance and jumped on a bus that wasn't recommended to us but the driver said it was ok he was going near where we needed. He dropped us further away than expected and it was a panicked walk to Travelwheels but we arrived on time to a very helpful chap called Dale from north wales. Dale had been out here 6 weeks and originally came out with a girl he'd just met at a festival and took a chance on her, but after only 2 weeks of being here with her it didn't work out so now he was continuing his journey alone! He showed us around the van and took us through some useful tips of apps to use, one called 'Wikicamps' which I paid £4 for that shows you all the places you can park up and sleep overnight in your van in, and another app called 'Fuel Map' which tells you all the places to get fuel and which one is cheapest. After doing a short video of him setting up the bedding area so we knew what we were doing, and about a million questions later, he passed us the keys and we began our adventure.

Lisa drove us to the blue mountains and stopped off on the way to stock up the fridge and cupboards with some food for the next day. When we arrived it was past sunset and pretty dark, we clearly didn't know what we were doing and Lisa ended up reversing up the hill the wrong way whilst the neighbours stared. We plugged our campervan in to charge and the ensure bathroom was well worth the money being immaculate (apart from the fact the light didn't work that first night so I showered in the dark!) We tried to cook last minute dinner as the kitchen closed at 9pm and it was clear we were newbies as others watched us (most of them looked like families which came here annually and looked pretty unfriendly at our lack of knowledge on the camping scene) and then it was a fumble getting into bed but was pretty cosy and we could hear lots of different birds in the trees around us.

xxx