Next stop after Sydney...The Blue Mountains. Hard left at Sydney and 100 km into the bush! HAHA, Joe's gonna kill me, but I have to tell the story about his super awesome driving on our way out of town. To give ya the short version, we parked in a parking structure on our way to the zoo. On our way out Joe was driving and all the sudden heard a huge CRUNCH sound....ut oh...So we get out to examine what could have possibly happened only to notice that there was a bunch of fiberglass pieces lying on the ground! Joe (and me and gina..i guess) didn’t notice the low overhang sign. The suspension steel above had officially removed our air vent...oops. Thank god we didn’t keep going because the next one would have taken off the roof!!!! That was a tense 15 mintutes. We almost had a convertible!!!!!
I think the most important lesson of this trip was that anything worth seeing in Australia is just a blurb on a map and a mandatory 25 miles on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere!!!!!!! Of all the things we've done to date the best stuff by far is miles and miles away from the tourist crowds and even the nearest petrol station and off on a dirt road...I think there might be a life lesson buried in there somewhere ;). The Blue Mountains were no exception.
One of the better stops in the Mts was the Wentworth Falls; the falls themselves were pretty lame, but the hike up to them was carved out of the side of a cliff face. It’s hard to describe or take pictures of, but it looks as crazy as you'd imagine! The side of a cliff tunneled out so there was just enough room to walk, albeit hunched over for a good portion of the hike!
After this we got off the beaten path and into the good stuff again...FINALLY! It would take 5 pages to describe next few hikes (some of which were 3-4 hours and most we're really good!) so I’ll just touch on our a few of our favorites. The first was called “The Grand Canyon” (that sounds a little familiar!?!?). This one a long bugger (3-4 hour) with a whooole bunch of climbing, ugh. At the top was a big rock face cliff and at the bottom was a Jurassic Park-esque rainforest with a river. Beautiful stuff. I also got in-touch with my new Canadian heritage and built one of those rock men they're so proud of!!! You better be proud Kim!!!
Our second highlight was probably the Kanagra-Boyd park which had a beautiful waterfall after climbing down (and back up) 500 stairs. And more notably this unnamed cliff view that was quite possibly the most dangerous thing I’ve ever seen (which is saying a lot considering my stay in New Zealand). The path to this thing led right to the edge of a mountain cliff...no fence, no guardrails, no safety devices whatsoever. And this thing dropped off like 700-1000 feet...straight down....STRAIGHT DOWN. To make matters worse the path leading to the edge was sloping downward and covered in moss, I can only imagine if it were wet and slippery. I took a video and i'll figure out how to post it up, you honestly won’t believe that this exists. It made the big lookout with the safety fence we found the previous day seem like childsplay. Speaking of that, could you imagine taking kids to this thing!!!!
We made a few other stops, more hiking, more caving. Joe also got pulled over and had to submit to breathalyzer!!! That’s the kind of driving I have to deal with ;). There’s more to this story that makes it look better for Joe, but I think I’m gonna leave those details out. :D
