Blogs from Katoomba, New South Wales, Australia, Oceania - page 10

Arriving in the Blue Mountains to a heavy mist & 2 meter visibility wasn't the worst of it...it was the rain & the cold that was the killer...so no more begrudgers at home!!!.....Follow this with a quirky hostel with an out-dated heating system & we were very quickly looking at alternative options if things didn't brighten up. Apparently summer has been slow to arrive here in the Blue Mts & there has been about 3 weeks of rain which isn't the best for business & sun-worshipping backpackers......not so much that we bake ourselves under the sun all day but our tolerance for environments less than 20*C isn't what it used to be!! Needless to say we started to eat to reinforce our blubber layers.....it's a more backpacker-friendly way to carry your warm clothes.....& thankfully there are ... read more

Woke up at 8am to get ready for the second day of hiking... not a problem. Our room smelled of old greek salad, yum. We ate breakfast, cleaned out our rooms, and checked out from the hostel. We drove a few minutes to "Scenic World", our starting point for this hike. To get into the valley, we had to take this rail car, no biggie. Now, the track that the car runs on is famous because it is the STEEPEST track in the world. Surprised, worried, scared, none of those words could even describe what was running through us when we realized there were no seatbelts or bar to hold you in... you just have to hold on. The ride was incredibly slow and insanely steep. It felt as if we were descending almost straight down, ... read more

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 ... read more

Early start yesterday as we were picked up at 7am. Stopped off to see wild kangaroos on route which was fab! Took loads of photos but need time to sit and upload them all! Then we drove to Wentworth Falls - amazing! The view was spectacular - the mountains appear blue due to a haze from the Eucalyptus. Waterfalls...beautiful. Had to walk down a rocky cliff path full of stairs (which was tolerable - just) but then back up again...thought I was going to die! Can't believe I made it! Lastly we went to Katoomba where we did another walk down the mountain and got the worlds steepest railway train back up - 52 degrees....work it out - scary!!! Our tour guides, Jimmy and Squirtles painted our faces with "facepaint" that the aboriginals used - from ... read more

Gooday Mates! I know its been yonks (to use a good Aussie word for 'ages') since I've posted an update but as some of you may have noticed there was a problem with the TravelBlog server and all of my past blog entries (as well as the one I was currently working on) were lost....or so I thought. Thanks to the person who helped to restore them, as we say in Australia that's "heaps good!" and "Ta" (Aussie slang for 'thanks'....as I recall one of you did request more fun Aussie words so I'm doing my best) My other excuse for not updating sooner is that the internet connections here actually have a limit for the number of megs you can transfer during the month which I found out after downloading tonnes of itunes and then ... read more