Friday, August 27

Friday was by far the best day of the entire trip!  We woke up really early, well 7am, but that is early for backpackers, and got on a bus to see the Blue Mountains.  The Blue Mountains is an amazing area just an hour west of Sydney that is completely opposite of the city.  You would have know idea that a massive, bustling city could be so close to these amazing expanding hills and bush!  Anyways, we all walk outside the hostel wearing jeans and a sweatshirt (or jumper according to the UKers) and our tour guide says, get back upstairs, its gonna be some negative 5 shit up there.  Aka negative 5 degrees Celsius, which is in the 20s for us I guess.  So we all run upstairs and add about three more layers each!  Then we get on the bus, and our tour guide for the day, Smokey, drives us out to the Blue Mountains and tells us the history of Sydney.  Good thing I read my Sydney tourism books, I knew exactly what he was talking about and could answer all the pop questions!  After about an hour drive (we drove under the harbor bridge!) we got into the Blue Mountain area.  First we went to an area where you can camp, although I would never want to camp in these areas after hearing about all of the spiders, snakes, and mean kangaroos that hang around those parts!  Smokey made us walk straight into the bush, not on the convenient paths that the rangers had set up, to look at spiders that he found under bark.  I was officially creeped out, so I stood near the back and still managed to have ants crawl all over my legs.  But all the boys loved it, so I let them take the pictures and I will just steal them to put here for you all to see.  After the spider bush walk, we saw some kangaroos hanging around, and Smokey said that these wild kangaroos could hurt you, even though I pet a very nice joey named Ned two years ago.

We got back on the bus and headed into town for breakfast.  Then we drove into Katoomba to start our massive trek around the mountains.  We headed straightaway Suicide Point, which earned its name for a reason!  We saw this beautiful water fall, but to get there we had to hike down these giant stairs.  Little did I know when we were going down the stairs, that I would have to hike back up them!  The stairs were literally 70 degrees, I had to crawl back up them.  Needless to say, I sweat out my cold and won the award for having the most red face, and I thought I was fit!  After the three hour long suicide walk, we finally headed into town to eat lunch.  It was so cold! We sat by the fire while eating our cheese sandwiches.  Then we got back on the bus and drove to another area to hike some more!  On the new walk, we saw another waterfall that supposedly looks like a witch, but I didn't see it.  Then we saw these three rock formations, called the three sisters, and Smokey told us an old Aboriginal story of how the formations came to be.  Fortunately, after this walk down the mountains, there was a train that takes you back up to the top.  But the train goes up the mountain at almost 90 degrees! It felt like I was going to fall out of the train, since there were no seat belts, only a cage on top so you don't fall out!

After the train, we got back on the bus and went back to Coogee.  It was an amazing day.  I am so happy I finally got to see the Blue Mountains and its spectacular views!