Mountain Heritage (View Room) Katoomba

... proved to be an under-estimation seeing as the score as 5-1, sending England to the World Cup next year!

The next morning I took a bus for fifteen minutes closer to Sydney to Wentworth Falls, which is a similar area to Echo Point, just further along the cliffs. The waterfall here was the most impressive I saw in the mountains, and I spent three hours walking around some steep walking paths with perishing drops ...

... was shining on the cliff faces giving them an orangey terracotta hue. The forests of trees, mainly eucalypts, stretching into the distance, as far as the eye could see, where shrouded with a blue haze, hence the name Blue Mountains.

We walked to the 3 sisters lookout and then down some very steep steps and across a scary bridge to the Honeymoon Cave which is located in the first of the 3 sisters rocks. We then had to ...

... Sydney this morning. Our driver was one crazy Aussie. Didn't catch his name, or half of what he said, but he was hilarious and great. A very good guide for our day trip out to the Blue Mountains. The Oz buses are significantly smaller than the Kiwi Buses with only three seats across, so Kristen and I sat across the aisle from each other and I sat next to Carys from London, who was on her own round the world trek before ...

... I study a map and plot my route along the Prince Henry Cliff Walk. Its the one I tried to get on yesterday with the wrong shoes. I head up to the start of the walk which is about 20 mins from the hostel and I finally find the track. Its a bit flooded and I seem to be the first person walking it today as along the way I walk face first into a few spider webs (which freaks me out no end so I walk with my arm out in front of me for most of it). The walk is beautiful and under lush trees ...

... was the Blue Mountains. We stayed in a beautiful Art Deco hostel in the town of Katoomba and went on some lovely walks - managing not to get lost along the way.....The weather was beautiful and we got some stunning views of the '3 sisters' and Katoomba falls. The backdrop was remeniscent of a Green Grand Canyon and it was amazing to stroll around and see parrots, lauraqueets and lizards - we had truely arrived in Australia! We had a great few days here and I highly recommend,

... However, we needed food first.  The first few restaurants we checked out did have spots for people without reservations, which I was surprised at.  However, they had a set menu with a $150 price.  We were sure we could do better than that.  We eventually found a place with only a $25 minimum where we could get pizza.  We partied like it was 1999 by having dessert first, and pizza second.  During our pizza the fireworks started.  We could see them pretty well from our table, but got to ...

18/09/2008 Got up early and headed 2 hours inland to the Blue Mountains National Park. First did a walk around Wentworth falls which we could hear but not see as the path was closed after refent floods. Good views though. Next we headed to the town ...

... to do. The idea of possibly sitting at home all weekend was too much for me so I decided that this was the weekend to head to the 'mountains' (I use the term loosely because the Sierras would laugh at them). Since I started my plans a bit late in the week and it was a 3-day weekend I was pretty much SOL with finding a cheap place to sleep. After begging a few hostels to find me a bed I gave up and was all set to just mope around Sydney when I ...

... which was cool. He could have done with a haircut though ;)



We then headed to a 'scenic park' which offered a variety of methods of transport up and down and across the valley.

First we headed across the valley on a big cable car with a ...