Blue Mountains

On July 12th I took Andrea up to the Blue Mountains. This is a UNESCO World Heritage site, a nature preserve, and it is located about 100 kilometers west of Sydney. We took a cheap hotel room in Katoomba for two nights and spent both days exploring the town and taking a tour of the ‘mountains’. The name is misleading since they are not actually mountains, more like cliffs on a plateau. But they are beautiful and definitely deserve a spot on UNESCO’s list. There is a famous sandstone formation known as the Three Sisters that was absolutely striking. We took a walk through a rainforest for well over 2 hours and actually took a wrong turn. About 50 minutes into our little escapade off the beaten path along a cliff wall we realized the path was getting narrower and rockier. Luckily we ran into a couple who told us we were going the wrong way if we wanted to get to our destination, otherwise we would’ve kept going and ended up way out. We turned back and made our way to Scenic World, a tourist stop that features the world’s steepest train at a 57 degree angle descent, a cable car over the rainforest and a sky car between two cliff faces. We took the full package and it was well worth the price. Check out the pictures below. I think they are some of the best pictures from my stay here so far. Most of the pictures you see were taken by Andrea.

View from Echo Point

The Three Sisters from Echo Point

Outcropping cliff west of Echo Point

View East into the valley

Me in a natural cave, one of many in the rainforest

Beautiful little stairway on the path

Andy as the Fourth Sister! So cute...

Taking in the vastness of the eucalyptus valley

Interesting rock formating in the cliff wall

Another stairway (I love these shots)

I think this is Andy's favorite picture

We took over a hundred of photos during our hike, but I think these select few are the nicest and best showcase the scale and beauty of the Blue Mountains region. I still feel like no photo could ever do the site justice, but I hope these convey the feeling of awe and wonder we experienced.

Update!!!

It’s been a month since my last update, so this one is gonna be big! I’m not sure where to start as so much has happened in the last 30 days or so. Well, first of all, I am now down to one flat mate, Montri. Nils has left to travel around Australia with his girlfriend and will come back on the 27th, only to leave for Germany a couple days later. I’m holding his stuff until he comes back, but basically Marco and Nils’ room looks as though no one had lived in it. Sad... On a happier note, I picked up Andrea at the airport on the 29th of June and we’ve had an awesome 2 weeks so far! That’s part of the reason I haven’t updated my blog, the other part being that the A/C adapter for my laptop broke and it took a one-and-a-half week game of phone tag with Toshiba to figure out they are useless as tits on a bull and that I have better things do. So I bought a new one. Hopefully I’ll be able to claim it on the warrantee with the receipt. What else is new…
Oh yeah, I got a job. I now work at Kwik Kopy in West Ryde at 1059 Victoria Rd. It’s a print shop where we do digital printing and put projects together for clients like books, business cards, flyers, menus, etc. 13.75 an hour. Not bad. I usually work 2 or 3 days a week, 9 to 5. So at the end of the day I pocket 100 bucks. I’m happy with that.
That’s the news here in brief. On the posts above you will see an expose of my trip with Andrea to the Blue Mountains and Katoomba, my first and second visits to the Sydney aquarium, and some other stuff I felt like posting. And yes, there are lots and lots of photos. Dig in!