For the life of me I cant remember the name of the town we stayed in while we visited the blue mountains, Nagalooloo or JumbaJumba or something weird like that. It was a nice little town, old looking and in the mist was very old gold mining town like (imagination required). We got there just after Summer Bay and it was still quite nice, although it was fairly cloudy still. I think the temperature on the car topped out at 36 on the way up, or across. As for the blue mountains, well they were green. The ones in the distance were kind of blue.... like most mountains in the distance tend to look!!! We stopped off at the three sisters on the way to the hostel, impressive enough for three rocks sticking out of the ground!!!

The hostel was lovely, the YHA. Really big and clean... massive step up from the previous hole we were in. They had post cards of the blue mountains looking blue, so I asked when they looked like that. Aparently its to do with vapour that comes up in the evening, five minutes either side of sunset on a day that has had a lot of sunshine.... so we were to come back down again. Some time later, as the sun was beginning to set, we returned to the viewing platform and waited. I think our imaginations started to get the better of us, as we were now convinced they looked blue.... they didnt, the photos should prove that. It had been really hot all day, but not sunny enough.... try again tomorrow so!!!

The next day, we took a walk down into the forrest.... rain forrest / jungle type stuff. Pretty good path running through it but it was hot as hell down there. It was cool though, so many birds and stuff..... We made our way across through the forrest parallel to the road above on the cliff, and we came to the Giant Staircase..... how bad could it be!!!! About three quarters of the way up... and about three quarters of a gallon of sweat lighter, we passed some Germans. They asked if it was hard, and I of course sarcastically replied "nah its grand", to which he replied "but you are covered in sweat", to which I replied "ah no I just poured water on myself", to which he suprisingly replied "that wasnt a good idea was it, now you are all wet". I love sarcasm and its being lost on foreigners...... We reached the top anyway, wounded by the affair, and took in the view before going back to the hostel to wash ourselves throroughly.... my tshirt took three days to dry.... yuck (its going in the bin). That evening we tried another lookout, which was meant to be better, but again it just hadnt been sunny enough during the day for the desired effect. I hope the post cards of the mountains we saw in the hostel werent altered in anyway, that would be annoying. I guess they have to have gotten the name blue mountains for some reason, maybe it is because people come away feeling blue because they actually looked green?!?!?!

Anyway, on we went back to Sydney, and a different part of town..... queue the start of about ten days of beach hoping down the coast...... nice!!!!!