Blogs from Blue Mountains, New South Wales, Australia, Oceania - page 11

Lorenza and I have been lucky to play host recently to two visitors via Couch Surfing - Cristina from Spain/France and then Olga from Russia/Denmark. Both were very interesting, positive visitors who we were happy to welcome into our home for a short time. Lots of conspiracy theories & meditation Cristina entered our home and created a whirlwind of energy! She was on her way to a meditation retreat in the Blue Mountains and decided she had to get out of Sydney for a few days. Mind you, she had only arrived in Sydney from Spain a few days prior, but found being in our biggest city a bit daunting. After driving to the other side of the Blue Mountains to collect her (she had taken the train in the wrong direction) we got Cristina home ... read more

Blue Mountains in Scenic World: zeleznica in sprehod. To je spust z zeleznico v globino, v pragozd, kjer po mosticastih stezah, da ne bi oskrunili gozdnih tal, lahko turisticno ogledujemo pragozd. Zivali so se gotovo sramezljivo umaknile nasim ocem, le dolgorepi ptici, ki so gnezdili na gozdnih tleh, se niso menili za nas. Pred 150. leti so ped pecinami, kamor smo se spustile z zeleznico, se kopali premog, sekali gozd in naredili pravo opustosenje. Tako je bilo razvidno iz na starih fotografijah pred opustelimi rovi. Gozd se je v zadnjem stoletju obnovil in danes nas obdajalo visoko drevje evkaliptusov, praproti, vse preprezeno z ovijalkami. Gozd je bil tak, kot, da se tukaj ni nic dogajalo. So rane zares zaceljene? Z Railway dol in s Cableway spet nazaj na ploscad, ki so jo uredili posebej za turiste. ... read more

The day after I arrived in Sydney I went for a bushwalk in the Blue Mountains, a scenic area west of Sydney. The area was huge, requiring the use of a bus to get between the starting points of the walks. The Blue Mountains are most famous for the Three Sisters, a rock formation. The scenery was nice, but repetitive. Truth be told 2 hours on the train to get there was a long time for what it was - I've definitely seen better mountains in New Zealand! Still, I saw my first wild snake here - it was only small and it slithered away in fear, but an experience nonetheless! Lovely sunny day - absolutely scorching in fact. A day in bed recovering from sunstroke taught me that for this kind of exposure to the ... read more

After that morning’s little incident, Hillary and I went out in search of a dry cleaner. We found one pretty quickly, and we were lucky because it was right next door to a walk in clinic. The thing was that my foot had been hurting for a few days, and we were worried my toe had an infection. Turns out we were right. After a quick visit, I got a prescription for some antibiotics, and we were off to the races (with a bit of a limp)! That afternoon we looked a bit around the city, but kept it fairly low key. This was now Hillary’s third time to Sydney, and we had both logged a decent amount of time trekking around the downtown core so we weren’t too concerned about missing anything. We spent the ... read more

Well, we escaped the sandstorm in Sydney and thankfully it didn't follow us to the Blue Mountains, though it was still a bit windy and cool! On the way we stopped off at Wentworth Falls, though when you've seen Iguazu Falls in South America nothing really compares! As it was windy the water from the fall actually blew upwards instead of down! We were really impressed with the YHA hostel in Katoomba. It had a very relaxed atmosphere with a lovely art deco social area and fire place (needed for the cold evenings). We went for one of the fab walks around Katoomba where we got great views of the Three Sisters and eucalyptus covered canyons creating the blue haze. After walking down 900 steps (!) into the canyon we got the worlds steepest railway back ... read more