Day 3: Blue Mountains.

Before I had jumped onto the ferry for the Taronga zoo, I went to the Sydney information center in The Rocks. They told me that lots of tourists, when they come to Sydney, take a day trip to the Blue Mountains. I thought, "heck, I'm a tourist, I'll do it too," so I had them book me a place on a bus in the Blue Mountains. After they had called ahead and booked me a bus, they decided to tell me that the bus didn't actually leave from Sydney. No, the bus takes you around the Blue Mountain area, but it doesn't take you to the Blue Mountains. For that, I had to take a train.


Armed with this knowledge, I found my way to the central railway station for Sydney. There was a weird ticket machine in front of the turnstiles that took me a couple of tries to figure out, but eventually I walked through the turnstiles, ticket in hand, ready to get on a train. Of course, that's not entirely how it worked out. You see, I'm convinced that psychologists have designed the central railway station in order to see how very much alike humans and mice are in mazes. Seriously, after walking around in there theoretically following the correct signs for about 20 minutes, I expected to see a big piece of cheese around the next turn. It was like living in a Escher painting.


Eventually, however, I proved to be more than a match for the maze, and I sat on the correct train mere minutes before it was set to take off for the Blue Mountains. Phew.


The train ride itself began rater unremarkably; it could have been a suburb in any city that ever existed. It was lacking any intrinsically Australian quality. Or so I though. About an hour into the ride I found myself looking avidly out of the windows at the surprisingly beautiful countryside. I've personally always pictured Australia as the Outback and nothing more, (Which is not entirely inaccurate, most of the continent really is the Outback.) I'm happy to categorically state that I was wrong.


The Blue Mountains get their name from the blue haze that surrounds them, day and night. Apparently this is because there's an enormous amount of Eucalyptus (or, if you prefer, gum) trees in the area, and there's some substance on the leaf that, when it evaporates, results in a small blue haze. When you multiply that by the number of Gum trees that are in that forest, you get Blue Mountains. And you get beautiful. If you took the grand canyon, inverted it into a mountain, and added trees on every possible surface, then you'd get the Blue Mountains.

Anyways, there's a variety of lazy yet awesome touristy things that you could do there: Take a tram up and over an extremely deep chasm, ride up the world's steepest tram, take quick half hour hikes, that kind of thing. I began my day with every intention of doing those kinds of things, but when I got off of the bus at the wrong stop, the priorities of my day shifted abruptly. I decided that it would be good to hike, so hike I did. I walked pretty much every inch of the mountains that I could reach. These are the views that I was privileged to witness all day long:







The surrounding native bush. Needless to say, it were purty.



This little waterfall is known as Witch's leap. Apparently the word "leap" in a Scottish tongue means "waterfall," so it's not literally the leap of a witch. In fact, they got the witch word from the face that you can see in the rock if you look closely.



Katoomba falls.



The view from the top of Katoomba falls. With my innate fear of heights, this was as close as I was willing to get. Sorry.



Perhaps the most famous part of the Blue Mountains are the three sisters. Apparently they used to be the seven sisters, but the other four either fell down or got married or something, but they're not there anymore. Anyways, this is a view from the top of Furber Steps looking across at the sisters.





This is a view of the Three Sisters from underneath, which is where the track took me.



When one finally gets to the top of the Giant Steps, one is allowed to walk over to one of the sisters. The view is amazing, and it's a loooong way down. You'd have a loooong time to wave goodbye.





My parting view of the sisters.



That day, I did more stairs than is healthy for any human being.

These are the Furber Steps.



In fact, I did the Giant Staircase:



which was, indeed, giant. It's effectively a massive as staircase that takes somewhere between 30 and 45 minutes to climb. I was one of only 3 people that I saw going up, the great majority were smart enough to go down. Oh well, I tend to take the path of most resistance, even when given a choice. Anyways, the Giant staircase ended up at one of the famous 3 Sisters (Which apparently used to be 7 Sisters before erosion got in the way). Oh, and in case you're wondering ('cuz I was), no, you can't actually climb any of the three sisters or surrounding cliffs, c'est interdit. They have some logical hippie excuse about how climbing prevents plants from growing which makes the Sisters erode faster. Or something like that. Oh well.


That hike, and others, effectively ate up both my supply of daylight and my supply of energy, so I took the bus back into town, arriving into Sydney at approximately 7:00. I realized that I was really tired, that there was nothing to do on a Tuesday night anyways, and that I was still sick, so I elected to spend the night reading a novel, eating home-made Pad Thai from an awesome Thai joint close to my hostel. I then proceeded to cough myself to sleep, which I'm sure didn't make my dorm-mates very happy. Oh well, I'd just buy Dimetap the next day, that'd kick it.


Stay Tuned, Day 4 To Follow.