Blue Mountains

The Blue Mountains, so called because of the blue haze around them, are about an hour and a half drive from Sydney. To make the most of out first day we left nice & early, 8am on Saturday morning. We arrived at out cottage in "Wentworth Falls", a nice little village sitting at about 900m. Strange to think that in Europe this would be getting up to ski resort level when here it was a relatively warm 21C! After dumping all our stuff in our cosy little cottage we headed off for a bush walk in the mountains. We headed for the "National Pass" walk along the middle of the cliff. To get there we had to go down a lot of steps through "The Valley of the Waters", a series of magnificent waterfalls made even more spectacular due to the fact it has actually been raining recently, filling the rivers & streams. After passing through (and around & even under!) the falls we got to the National Pass with some amazing views of the valleys and mountains, covered with dense forests of trees where people have probably never been. After about 90 minutes walking we got to the falls themselves, beautiful high falls made even more magnificent by the sun shining over the top making them sparkle. We stopped at the bottom and had a picnic lunch before heading to the top of the falls. The walk up to the "Overcliff Pass" was quite challenging as it was via a series of steps carved from the rock, over 600 steps in fact! Once at the top we walked along the top of the cliff with even more breathtaking views, eventually arriving back where we started after a great 4 hour trek.

Yesterday we got up early again and headed for "Echo Point", the most visited place in the Blue Mountains. The reason being, its the main view point for the "Three Sisters" rock formation, a pretty strange formation with three pillars of rock standing alone at the end of a cliff when all around them has eroded away. We were planning to meet Ben, Fahmiya, Shari & Aaliyah later on so we didn't have time for a long walk but instead we did the "Giant Stairway" a challenging stairway down the cliff mostly carved from the rock but occasionally with extra metal stairs. We counted the steps and there were 901, and that's just one way! so 1802 steps (and a ridiculously sweaty back) later we got back to the top and went to the little mountain village of Leura to meet up with everyone and have lunch. After lunch Ben & Fahmiya took us to see the place they got married, and what a place it was! The view is amazing, there can't be a more picturesque wedding place! After playing with the girls and pushing them on swings we went to visit Katoomba where there is a scenic railway, skyway and cable car down into the valley. We took the worlds steepest railway down, with it's steepest incline being 52 degrees and the average incline being 43 degrees. It was a lot steeper than it sounded, especially feeling it whilst going through the 80 metre natural tunnel (pitch black!) through the cliff face! After a short walk, we came back up via the scenic skyway which Shari seemed to enjoy! After all the exercise of the last couple of days we were definitely ready for bed after the drive home!