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Published: November 16th 2007
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Slightly obvious warning...
Don't fall off the Mountain? Hello Again!!
Since my last entry, the weather has finally started to pick up which has been awesome! I got my first sunburn today, I'm amazed I made it this long. This week has been pretty crazy, Sarah and I left early Monday morning, and took the train up to Katoomba, which is a city in the heart of the Blue Mountains, about 2 hours north of Sydney. We checked into our hostel and headed down to the heart of the national park, which is called Echo point. It's this amazing spot that looks out over endless mountains, and is right next to the Three Sisters, which is a really famous rock formation..I don't know how else to describe it, but its pretty cool, look at the pics. From there we went on a crazy 4 1/2 hour hike through the mountains with 3 dutch guys we met in our hostel, and a girl from Chicago. The 3 dutch guys were super nice, except for they were all wearing sandals with socks?? Mom-finally-a country that embraces your fashion sense!! The hike was amazing, but finished with about an hour climb back UP the mountain, and I thought I was going
to die a couple of times. My legs were literally shaking uncontrollably by the time I finished climbing all the stairs. It was rough.
The next day we signed up to go abseiling, which is basically rapelling down a cliff side. Sarah and I were the only two people who had signed up, so it was just the two of us and a guide! He took us to the climbing site, right in the middle of the Blue Mountains by a waterfall, and we started with a little 5 meter drop, and worked our way up to a 30 meter drop! It was pretty crazy, although the guide is spotting you, you have control over how fast you drop down the rope, so my hands were numb by the end from clutching the rope so tightly. We walked back down to Echo Point later in the evening to watch the sunset. When the sun sets, all of the mountains get this blue tinge, hence the name Blue Mountains. The blue effect has something to do with the Euclyptus oil in the trees reflecting or something like that, one of the Dutch guys was trying to explain it but I
really don't remember or couldn't understand him.
The next day we were off to the Hunter Valley, which is a huge wine region in Australia. We were planning on taking the train, but the girl we met on our hike was heading in that direction, and had a rent-a-car, so we jumped in! It was a great call, b/c not only did we save money and time avoiding the train, but we drove through a super scenic route leaving the Blue Mountains. After Amanda (the girl from Chicago) dropped us off at our Hunter Valley hostel, we realized that there wouldn't be anyone at reception for another 2 hours (perks of paying $25 a night for a room) and that we had apparently been dropped off in the Saraha desert, it was about 90 degrees with absolutly no trees or shade. We somehow survived, checked in, and just hung around our hostel for the night, and ended up going to the pub with a British guy and his mom. So random, but I have a feeling things like that will be happening a lot throughout the trip.
The next day was spent doing wine tastings! I originally thought we
would be able to do it on our own- "don't worry Sarah-I'm sure the vineyards aren't that far apart!", but once I realized that the Hunter Valley was like a 10 square mile region, we quickly wisened up and signed up for a tour. Our bus picked us up at 9 am, apparently thats the best time to start drinking in Australia. It was a totally slothful, but perfect day. At each vineyard, the owner would come out with different wines and pour tastes for everyone, and tell us what flavours/smells were particular to the various wines. Our bus had a pretty big mix of people of all ages, and we went to 5-6 different vineyards throughout the day. Probably the best moment was, after going through 2 vineyards, we stopped at a store that had bread and flavored olive oil samples, where i proceeded to down about a half a loaf of bread in about 10 minutes, i think I pushed an old man out of the way to get back to the Garlic olive oil samples. After 5 vineyards worth of wine, and being in the hot sun all day, we were totally spent and slept on the
bus the whole way back to Sydney. I now feel like a true wine connessiur, but due to my funds, I may be drinking boxed wine for quite awhile when I get home.
When we got back to Dan's house in Sydney, our friend Mark surprised us and came up for the night, which was so great, I hadn't seen him in over a year. Sarah, Danielle, Mark and I all went out to the pub, where Max, another boy from camp met up with us as well, so it was a big old camp reunion in Australia!
Today Mark, Sarah and I went to Manly, which is a great beachy neighborhood on the outskirts of Sydney, and took a ferry to the inner harbor. Tomorrow I'm off for Melbourne to stay with some other camp friends-can't wait!
It's still hard to believe I'm here...everything here is so western that I sometimes forget I'm all the way across the world. Please keep posting comments, it makes me super happy to hear from everyone!
Oh, P.S-ran into another girl from camp at the pub last week. Thats my 2nd random run-in with someone I know since I've been here!
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mom
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WOW!
I love your descriptions. I will leave it at WOW for now. Off to London tonight to see Jake for TG week. Will be staying with another camp family: Claire Howick Love you!