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Published: April 19th 2008
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I have left it a bit too long to write a very detailed entry on Sydney and I have approximately 1 hour before I head off to the Whitsunday’s so will have to fire off this entry fairly quickly!
I arrived in Sydney on the 27th of March and was met at the Airport by my friend Chris, who had taken a week off work to show me and his mum (for the first part of the week) around Sydney, the Blue Mountains and The Hunter Valley. He moved out to Bondi Beach in January and has a very nice apartment on the beach. He was a very generous host and treated me to lots of meals and trips - more than I deserved!! Still it was very nice not to live like a backpacker for a week!
When I arrived we checked out Bondi Beach - a beautiful but very, very busy beach popular with surfers. Bondi is FULL of incredibly attractive and toned people who look like they spend the whole day running up and down between the different beaches on the coast. We ate out pretty much every night at very nice restaurants, the highlight being
Pretending to ride the trike -
Don't worry I was safely holding on at the back!! a restaurant called Summit which is on the 48th floor looking over Sydney. It revolves too which is quite a strange feeling and means that every time you need the toilet it is in a different place so you have to go and find it! It was 60 earth hour while we were there which meant that the world should be switching off their lights for one hour to deliver a message about the need for action against global warming. I thought it was quite funny that after the hour was over Sydney decided to celebrate by putting on an enormous fireworks display - completely missing the point!! It was an interesting experience not being able to see what you are eating but the food was so delicious that it didn't matter!
The first full day in Sydney we climbed the harbour bridge which is 134metres high and 500m wide. This was a really exhilarating experience and actually a lot more scary than I thought it would be. They put you in the inevitable silly all in one suit that the antipodeans seem to favour and you are constantly hooked on as you climb up the steel arch. It's
a strange feeling standing above the traffic racing by below and looking over the harbour and botanical gardens.
We also went on many walks to the different bays - Manly and Watsons bay being the most memorable. In Sydney I have seen the most huge spiders I have ever seen in my life but as they were all safely in their webs and not crawling all over me I was happy to admire from afar their bulk and hairiness... yuk!
After we said goodbye to chris's mum we headed off to the Hunter Valley. We hired out a Motor trike for a bit of a ride along the coast first. I didn't even know these things existed but it was great fun and you will be glad to know that I wasn't allowed to drive it so am still in one piece!! At the Hunter Valley we stayed in an amazing lodge which was in the middle of nowhere. There was no other civilisation for 10s of miles. It had spectacular views over the Hunter Valley and Kangaroos, deer and beautiful birds on the doorstep. I saw my first parrots and Kookaburras. Everwhere you looked there was a
Sydney harbour Bridge
We weren't allowed to take cameras up with us incase we dropped it onto a car below so no pics of the climb but I did do it - honest!! new bird with vibrant colours to take your breath away or a kangaroo with a Joey in it's pouch hopping by.
After the Hunter Valley we drove to the Blue Mountains where we stayed in a lovely little B&B. We had booked a Canyoning trip in the valley which was a great way to end an indulgent week. It was no easy feat at 7 hours long. Unfortunately I don't have any photos as the water would have destroyed my camera but there was about an hour trek down to the gorge which we waded and swam through. There was lots of abseiling down waterfalls and free jumping into pools of icy cold water and swimming to get to the next abseil. There was no special girl treatment here! I was expected to carry a big rope, all my dry stuff (or heavy saturated wetsuit at the end) and equipment. We got to do lots of tricky scrambling up throughout too which was good fun but quite restrictive in a wetsuit. At the end there was a 2 hour ascent back to where we came from. This was by far the hardest part as I was already exhausted from
Sydney Opera House in background
On the Ferry on the way to Manly the day of canyoning. It didn't really help that I was walking up with Chris (who has done an iron man and climbed Mt Blanc last year amongst other things) and the adventure guide who does this every day... so I was certainly put through my paces... I was grateful to hear that we finished it well above the average group time yay!!
After an action packed week in Sydney it was time to jump on the greyhound and head up the coast to Byron Bay... my next stop.
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