Blue Mountains

Hi again! Just returned from 3 nights in the Blue Mountains which were fantastic. And Andrew was kind enough to lend us his car for the trip which meant we could look around a bit by ourselves and didn't have to rely on public transport.

From Sydney we drove out to a small town called Katoomba, which is nothing that special but it's a great base to explore the area. Having said that, I was quite exhausted (I think it was something to do with Andy's sofa bed, and Mikko's tendency to hog it all!) so the first thing we did after checking into the hostel was to find the TV room and watch a few old films! In the evening we did venture out in the evening though to see the town's most visited attraction- a rock formation known as the Three Sisters, floodlit by night.

The following day we went for a walk. It was only 10 kilometres or so but we really struggled, maybe partly because of the heat, but also because we're becoming really, really unfit! The walk went along some cliffs, by waterfalls, by the Three Sisters again (much more impressive in the daytime), down some treacherously steep steps and into the forest. Fortunately we didn't have to come up the same way because there was a small railway (apparently the steepest in the world!) so we took that instead, which was pretty fast and scary but surely beats climbing mountains in 30 degree heat!




The next day we were again pretty shattered so we took it easy, just driving around north of Katoomba and stopping at a series of mountain lookout points, really fantastic scenery. I didn't expect any of Australia's scenery to amaze me after the sights of New Zealand. Again, I'm completely wrong!



Today we made our way back to Sydney but on the way we decided to stop at a wildlife park. We almost didn't, because we got hopelessly lost and it started to rain heavily, but then after giving up on the idea we discovered we were actually on the raod we'd been looking for, and the sun broke out again! Good that it did, because the park was pretty good. There were hundreds of kangaroos, wombats, koalas, wallabies and exotic birds. We've seen quite a few kangaroos and even some sleeping koalas in the wild since we've been in the country, but this is the first time we got to pet them and feed them (which sounds silly, but I'm a sucker for that kind of thing!!).





Now we're back in Sydney and the weekend's about to begin! So we're off to enjoy that before we head off up north on Monday.