Blue Mountains and my old bones ...
Trip Start
Feb 23, 2005
1
9
47
Trip End
Jun 14, 2005
Katoomba,
Australia
Thursday, March 10, 2005
I have spent the last few days in Katoomba in the Blue Mountains. It's a short 2 hour train journey out of Sydney and in the middle of 3 HUGE national parks. They say that you could fit Holland into the largest one! I have been here 3 days now and had a fab time. The scenery is fantastic. I was on a 3 hour walk within 20 minutes of checking in to the hostel! I think the receptionist got the idea that I was a walker! The walk took me around the most famous points of the Blue Mountains National Park. The 3 sisters, 3 huge rock formations naturally created over millions of years that has separated from the main mountain face. I actually walked over a small bridge to one of them and touched the rock, they are VERY big :) The other well known point of my walk was the Great Staircase. It is a series of part rock and part man made steps going down the mountain into the valley below
A view of the Blue Mountains
. There must have been over 1000 steps. My knees were knocking by the end and I was a bit puffed! (and red faced!). I met two guys climbing the steps! One said he did it every day for fun! and the other, an Asian guy, was running it!!!! Thats a run of a 1000 odd steps that climb over 300 meters. Luckily, at the end of the walk at the bottom of the stairs is an amazing Scenic Railway. That's a posh name for rickety old couple of open topped train cars that get dragged 400 meters at a 50 degree angle! It only lasted about a minute but it was very exhillerating. And a great deal easier than climbing the 900 steps to the side!I staggered back up the hill to the hostel and collapsed into one of the chairs. Within 5 minutes I had accepted a invite to dinner with the guys from my room :) After a shower, I attempted to brave the walk to the pub and show my room mates that I was younger than I looked. I am not sure I succeeded :)
I had a rest on the next day, doing some reading and updating my journal I try to keep up to date. Chatted with a few of the guests and had a BBQ with the guys I met in my room. A Swiss guy, Dutch guy and a German. How continental! Nice bunch of chaps who made my stay here even better.
Another landscape
On the third day I decided to book a day of canyonning! I thought I would throw caution to the wind and pretend I am indeed one of the adventurous types! There were 7 on the course, 4 girls and 3 guys. The day started at 9 and lasted all day. The morning was taken up with 3 training abseilling drops. Each getting bigger and more scary. The first was tiny, to get us used to the feeling of hanging off a cliff suspended by a bolt smaller than the ones I used on my work bench!! The second was a 15 meter drop onto a outcrop in the rock face, into a valley that must have been 600 meters deep. I stupidly said I would go first and my knees knocked and my heart raced all the way down. At the bottom, the last 4 meters the rock face fell away and I was suspended in nothingness, very weird. The last training drop was 30 meters and was almost all free falling, no rock to kick off, so we had to lower ourselves down whilst dangling above huge drop, by this time I was thinking I had made a huge mistake :) But I did it and although I cant say I actually enjoyed being dangled over a drop like that, when I got to the bottom it was a huge feeling of achievement. After lunch and a 20 minute minibus run to our canyon we donned a wet suit, harness, hard hat and waterproof backpacks, we headed off down a long 30 minute walk to get to the start of the run. Canyonning for those that dont already know is a mix of climbing, swimming, abseilling and water jumps. For the next four hours I was launched, dropped, tripped and fell into rocks, water, pools and rock faces
Just like this!
. It was frightening, exhillerating, scary, total fun and a bit painful in parts! At the end of the jumping and swimming and climbing, we got to our last abseil of the day: Over a 35 meter drop into a waterfall. Eeek. I did it, but not very stylishly, I forgot most of my training and fell, banged and generally clabbered my way down, a few of the others did the same so I was not too embarrassed. By the end of the walk back to the bus I was absolutely knackered! But I am so glad I did it, even if I have more bumps and cuts than someone who has fallen down a large rock face, oh! I did!That night we all had a few drinks in the hostel and talked about our activities. For some strange reason that I cannot explain, I ended up going out to the all night supermarket at 11:30pm to buy Jacobs Crackers! My Swiss and Dutch friends did not believe me that they couldn't eat 3 crackers in 1 minute. I wish I had put money on it, they only managed 1 each. Lightweights :)
Back to Sydney tomorrow for a couple of nights and then off up the east coast.
Take care all.
