Today, we went here:
Well, okay, we didn't go there, exactly --- you need a wilderness permit for that. But we did go lots of places around it, with lovely views. I'm pretty tired from all the hiking, so I'll just give you the highlights from today.
First, some background. The Blue Mountains are about 2 hours outside of Sydney by train. The main feature that they're known for is a rock formation called The Three Sisters:
We got an early start on our bushwalking* and arrived in Katoomba, the main town in Blue Mountains National Park, around 10:30. We had a combo rail/bus ticket that got us from Sydney to Katoomba by train and then allowed unlimited rides on the bus loop around the main part of the park. A little pricey, and next time with some advanced planning we might not need the bus part of the ticket, but it worked out well for our first time.
The first thing to know about the Blue Mountains is that they are COLD. (Okay, and beautiful, but that doesn't really set the mood in the same way.) I mean, genuinely cold. Like, I-could-see-my-breath cold. Or maybe thank-God-for-my-hat cold. I guess it's better that way for hiking than too hot, but still. I'd gotten a bit spoiled with what passes for winter in Sydney. Oh, and windy. Did I mention it was windy, too? (All together now: "Awww...")
We started on the Prince Henry Cliff Walk, which went along the top of the ridge for a while, giving some spectacular views of the valley. Then descended to the Round Walk, which plunges down into the valley, providing a little shelter from the wind and some great views of the waterfalls from the bottom. This made a loop back up to the Cliff Walk, which we walked along to get to one of the main lookout areas, Echo Point. We had lunch there are a little cafe, which was not as overpriced as it might have been considering that it was the only game in town, and then continued for a few kilometers along the Cliff Walk to the town of Leura. Along the way, there were numerous overlooks to the valley and the Three Sisters, so here's a sampling:
Lone gum tree by Elysian overlook:
Me with the official sign, just to prove we were there:
Michael with the Three Sisters in the background:
Err, can't remember the name of this waterfall. But it's pretty, no?
Flora of the day: the Australian Banksia tree, easily recognizable by its bottle-brush flowers:
It's hard to get a real sense of what it was like from pictures, unfortunately, but it was wonderful. Everything was so lush and green --- the waterfalls were flowing, and the rock walls everywhere were dripping into little streams through the valley. As the day wore on, the birds started coming out and flitting through the trees. It was too leafy to get a good view of them for very long, but we could certainly hear them chirping away around us. I'll have to check a bird book for IDs, since I didn't recognize most of the them. This area is also home to the lyrebird, which is one of the coolest species ever. Check this out if you're not familiar with what they do:
But we didn't see any, unfortunately. One of the nice folks at the info center told us that we would most likely hear them scratching in the underbrush. Michael thinks that we might have heard some scratching and some of their calls, but I'm skeptical: It was hard to distinguish what that might have sounded like from the trees swaying in the wind, and it was hard to find a sufficient quiet interval between the groups of Japanese tourists. Plus, they don't really have a call of their own, so what we heard might have been the original birds' calls and not a lyrebird's imitation. Oh well.
By 4-ish we were getting fairly tired, and to top it off it had started raining, so we caught the bus back into town to get the train back to Sydney. We were a little early for the train when we got to the station, so we stopped in at a little shop selling locally-made chocolate and had a lime-basil truffle. Don't scoff; it was great.
Back in Darlinghurst, we had dinner at a noodle shop on Oxford St., and then dessert at Gelateria Messina on Victoria St. We were tempted by the marsala & pear flavor, but Michael's love of coconut won out and we got their Bounty Bar flavor (= coconut and chocolate. Bounty Bars are basically Mounds, but a little less sickly sweet). I think we earned it after all that walking!
*Linguistic note: Hiking in Australia is called "bushwalking." Probably because it involves walking. In the bush. Duh.
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