Day 89 - Tues 27th Jan -Sydney to the Blue Mountains

The usual early start to get the bus for the two day Blue Mountain tour that I was booked to do. It had been raining all night since the previous afternoon in Sydney, but we were assured that the forecast for the Blue Mountains was to be dry.

We drove for about two hours (in the rain) and our first stopwas on teh edge of a national park to try and find some kangaroos. Kangaroos are only active around sunrise and sunset and sleep during the day, so first thing in the morning is a really good time to see them. We found three, a male and two females, and we managed to get quite close to them which was great for my first kangaroo experience.

Then we drive on for about another hour and headed towards Wentworth falls. We went for a two hour hike through he the forest area, to get what was meant to be some spectacular views. However, whilst the rain had stopped it had left behind a lot of low lying cloud and we couldn't see a thing! Our tour guide was an English guy called Cactus (no I don't think that was his real name either!) who gave us loads of intesting facts about the forest, mountains and aboriginal life there. He also showed us how the aborignals used the ochre rocks to make face and bodypaints to tell stories. He then decorated some of the group with aboringal symbols, but decided to draw a cactus on me, which looks more like a caterpillar!

I think the most interesting two facts of the day were thess: (1) the Blue Mountains are not mountains. It's a canyon (2) the Blue Mountains are not blue. Aparantly on very hot days a vapor is released by the eucaplytus trees that can look like a blue haze. But I wouldnt know about that - cos it was too cloudy!

We headed on to a nearby park for a picnic lunch (still no view!). After lunch we had short drive to the Jamison valley, then spent another hour and half hiking through the forest and walking down 1000 steps. We were also keeping our eytes peeled during the walk to try and spot a lyre bird. Sadly we didn't see any. If you don't know what a Lyre bird is and you have 5 minutes on your hands punch in 'David Attenburgh Lyre bird' into You tube and watch this amazing bird at work.

Luckily during this walk we got our first proper view of the day and it was of the Three Sisters which is one of the most famous sights there. We also stopped ina cafe and a did a group 'cooee'; to hear it echo all across the valley.

What goes down must come up, so after we walked down all the steps into the valley we then got the Katoomba railway - steepest train in the world - back up to the top. It was only a few seconds but it was petty much vertical the whole way up! The train was original built in the late 1800s to transport coal from the mines - so wasn't meant for people!

Then it was time to get dropped off at the hostel in Katoomba for those of us that were staying the night, and the others were heading straight back to Sydney.

The hostel was really nice and I had a meal in with a couple of the girls form the trip.

Day 90 - Weds 28th Jan - Katoomba, Blue Mountains

Today was a free day to do what we wanted, and unlike the day before it was an absolute scorcher! I'd decided that I didn't want to do any more walking as we had done enough the day before and it was too hot. I had been contemplating going horse riding as I thought that would be a nice place to do it, but I decided to save that for later in my trip.

So instead I headed out to the local outdoor olympic size swimming pool and had a long wallow to cool down in the head.

I wandered round the town of Katoomba after that which is a nice little town but has a strange mix of cafes, touristy shops and antique paces.

We got picked up about 5pm and have atwo and half hour drive back to Sydney. I was staying at the same hostel as before (as I had left my bags there while I went off for a couple of days), but really wasn`t liking the place so decided to move the next day.