The Kind of Kid Who Goes Down Chutes Too Narrow

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  Sydney, Australia
Wednesday, January 11, 2006

M: The last two weeks have been a bit different than the first month of travel. We spent some wonderful quality time with Jessie's friend from camp, who I now like to claim as a friend of mine as well, Di. She was amazing with her hospitality taking us to her family's beach house and out to meet friends, etc. She was just SO freakin' cool. It was lots of fun. As a result, though, we were distracted from the internet and were engaged in not the same kinds of crazy adventures that warrant full disclosure. Then, I left New Zealand and Jessie stayed on. This gave us a chance to spend some quality time with our respective friends (Jessie with Di and me with Sebastian). Jessie arrived in Sydney on Sunday, January 8.

We spent Sunday, which was hot and sunny, walking from the famous Bondi beach down to Coogee beach, near Sebastian's apartment. The coastline was absolutely beautiful and dotted with surfers

Between Bondi and Coogee Beaches

. (J: although honestly, more of them were out just sitting on their surfboards than actually surfing) That is one very clear perk of Sydney - on the hot days, you simply leave work, change your clothes and head out to the beach, which is just down the road. It really is beautiful.

On Monday, we got up pretty early and with Sebastian, went on a mini-adventure to the northwest of Sydney. We went canyoning at this place called Sheep's Dip. (J: How much did Missy love THAT!) This meant that we hiked down into a canyon, put on wetsuits and followed the creek through the canyon. The reason this one was particularly fun (and not hard at all), is that there were all these natural waterslides. They were mostly very small and moss-coated, but they were tremendous amounts of fun. You just scooted a little bit and then whoosh! the water would carry you away into a pool at the bottom of the chute. VERY fun, even if the water was pretty chilly. (J: She means, freezing. It was pretty much, take your breath away cold. Yes, Mom, kinda like Damon Pond.) The three of us slid, jumped in pools and laughed a good deal. It was pretty great. And, as we were leaving, we saw a wallaby. He was pretty cute - like a kangaroo, but smaller.

We continued on to Mudgee (J: isn't that a great name?

Hiking in the Blue Mountains

! it means Nest in the Hills), which is in the plains, making it dry and warm to spend the night. In the morning, we got up and biked through the vineyards. Sebastian is a cyclist as his primary form of transportation, so he had to have a bit of patience with the two of us who haven't been on bikes in at least 10 years. Aside from having some difficulties with starting and stopping, it was a great time. (J: You will be happy to know that I did catch one of Missy's hilarious awkward stops, in which she pretty much fell into a huge planter. Hilarious. And this was pre-wine.) Very, very fun. And we tasted some delicious wines and helped Sebastian pick out the beginnings of his wine cellar.

J: It was definitely so much fun canyoning and biking. Yep, really really enjoyed the biking. I have been trying to brainstorm potential vineyard bike trips in the states...provided we actually get back and buy bikes. On the way back, we detoured to go back toward the canyon and look for a bike lock that fell off the day before. The road out to the canyon was dirt and full of potholes. It was insane and took forever to go back. We didn't find the bike lock, although we did find a chain that we had apparently left. But more exciting than the chain--for me--was the dozen or so kangaroo that we saw bounding in and out of the woods and across fields along the road. I love them. Unfortunately, Missy was not with us during this extra excursion as she had decided to bike sit at the entrance to the road and save herself from Sebastian's insane driving game of "let's see how fast we can go and still miss the potholes." So we are on the lookout for more kangaroos for Missy

Jessie on the Mudgee Bike Tour

.

Sebastian then dropped us off in a town called Katoomba in the Blue Mountains. We woke up early yesterday morning to get an early start as we were pretty sure it was going to get hot out...and it did, by about 9:30 we were sweating walking to the start of the hike, pretty far out of town. It was a pretty nice hike once we were out of the direct sunlight and away from the torturously obnoxious flies. We were in the bush and then scrambling over some rocks (M: that were unbelievably beautiful - pinks, oranges, etc) and then back in the bush. The problem was we didn't really know how far the hike was and the turn off that we thought we were taking we either missed or didn't exist. So we ended up walking even farther to the "Great Stairway" which was anything but "Great". In actuality it sucked. It was about 900 stairs almost all in direct sunlight and we were basically out of water. Needless to say this was NOT our favorite 45 minutes or so. But we survived and caught a bus back into town (we were so over walking) (M: the vistas were pretty incredible with the rock formations and trees and stuff). The train ride back into Sydney provided much needed rest and with the exception of a silly walk in the rain last night we had a very relaxing evening in...and we gleckel on...

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Kangaroos-A-Go-Go

Vineyards in the Plains

Willaby Wallaby

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