Blue Mountains

Well Australia has redeemed itself. The blue Mt's were fantastic.

01 valley

A 2hr train ride took us in land to the BM, and its surprising how much of a climate change there was. It was cold, freezing compared to Sydney with a drop of around 8c and it was raining but that only worked to our advantage as for one we had planed to do some walking and two it kept all the camera happy tourists away, joy.

After a night in the newly opened Backpacker Central Hostel we were up early and raring to go. fully Donned in our waterproofs we were going bush walking for the second time the only difference was there were no flies, it was nice and cool and the scenery was breath taking. We started our walk from Leura descending through the falls down towards the Fern Bower circuit onto the Federal pass which would take us all the way to the land slides were we turned back as it got a bit hairy. The decent down the cliff face comprised of some 1,000+ steps which we were glad to be going down instead of up this early in the walk. The change from being on the top of the cliff and seeing into the valley compared to being below and only seeing the tree canopy above was truly awesome and we were lucky enough only to see a handful of walkers during the day. The walk took us round the bottom of the three sisters but due to the mist you could only see two of them as you looked up (fortunately when we went to echo point the next day we saw all three from a birds eye view). The rain forest held some unexpected treats the wild life being one. It's funny in a way (or it is to us) even though you realise your in a totally different climate to that of back home you still never expect to see the sights you actually see, you expect them to be reserved for the voice of David Attenborough on the BBC and when you do come across a cockatoo flying above you start to really realise were you are.

02

When we turned back from the land slides we decided to walk the steps up to Scenic World to get a view into the valley again, needless to say it left us breathless and that wasn't because of the views, those steps were a bugger to say the least. It was worth it though and a cold beer was earnt for later.

Hope you like some of the pics, unfortunately the camera doesn't do it justice.

03 water fall

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06 a quick rest

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