Blue Mountains, Some Aussie Wildlife, and A Chill Day at The Rocks

Yesterday I went on a Blue Mountains tour. The group was scheduled to pick me up at 7:25, so I set my alarm for 6 am. I crept to the shower, with all my clothes I had laid out the night before (I am such a considerate hostel roommate, seriously), got ready, and went out to the common area to eat breakfast. I remembered they unlock the roof top terrace at 7 am, so I thought it would be a good time to get sunrise pictures of the harbour. I went up to the third floor to find out they had not unlocked it yet. A guy noticed me checking the doors and started talking to me. I distinctly detected no accent, so I asked where he was from. "Texas" he said. He had been here 3 weeks and was leaving this morning and had also come up to try and catch a last glimpse of the harbour. He was flying home, then immediately flying to Nigeria. I told him I felt sorry for him. We went back downstairs and outside and caught our rides. I had met quite a few Americans, at least in comparison to last time. I am in Sydney though, not the outback, so I am not that surprised. I also wonder if Oprah raised American awareness of Australia (kidding. I was so disappointed in her "trip to Aus." I had wanted her to try to make an impression and a difference, but it was just lame. She gave a already well-to-do Melbourne couple (who already had a kid, and therefore, had kid supplies) a new nursery. Big Whoop. I had written her and suggested she take the nice Aboriginal man who works at the telegraph station in Alice Springs to Graceland. He is a hug Elvis fan and had always wanted to take his granddaughter. And Oprah is BFF with Pricilla and Lisa Marie, it would have been sooooo easy! And meant a lot more.)

Anyway, where was I? Oh yea, on my bus. It took like 45 minutes to get everyone. I will never understand why it is so hard for people to be on time for pickup. You literally just have to walk downstairs and the van gets you, but at almost every stop, our driver had to run inside and search for people. We arrived at a terminal and were split into various vans. I tried not to giggle at Asian tourists recording every second of the journey- literally recording boarding the bus and walking down the aisle to a seat. I would be annoyed to have hours of footage of the backs of peoples heads on a bus, but to each their own. Finally, everyone got their stuff together and we were off.

Our first stop was a tiny town on the edge of the mountain that they stop us at for the specific purposes of funding business in that town. I know because this is what has happened on other tours. There aren't any specific sights in that town (though that won't keep from certain people taking endless shots of every door in town), but they stop there and they tell us to buy our lunch in this shop. After that, we went to an area called Echo Point. They had an Aboriginal show that we had to pay extra for, so I just went and looked at the three sisters rock formation.

The Aboriginal Dreamtime story about these rocks is that there were three very beautiful sisters, and to keep a neighboring tribe from kidnapping them, their father had them turned into stone. Seems to me that is cutting your nose off to spite your face, but who am I to argue with someone about their parenting?

Next, we went to the Blue Mountains park called Scenic World, which I do not care for. The name conjures up a cheesy theme park from an 80's Chevy Chase vacation movie. But it's not like that. It is pretty cool. They have the world's steepest railroad, a 52 degree angle that is an old mining rail adapted to become a tourist attraction, a cableway that carries you in a cart from the valley back up the mountain, and a skyway that carries you from one side of the mountain to the other. It was worth it to buy a ticket to ride each once, so I did. Now, I am kind of afraid of heights, and spent the evening picturing falls from the skyway car, but I somehow made it unharmed. The first ride was the insane 52 degree angle train. I ended up the end of the line, so I was the very first person for the next train. "You get the front row, the best seat," said Eric, the Aussie ticket taker. "I guess that depends on who you ask," I said. He highly recommended sitting on the front, even if it scared me a little. We talked for the next 10 minutes until the train came back, then I took Eric's advise and took a seat in the front car. Even before the train started, I was regretting it a little. We could just barely see over the edge of the cliff of the railway, and it was like a vertical drop on a roller coaster. I couldn't decide if a slow decent down this steep terrain would be better or worse than a quick drop. They played the music to Indian Jones as you started your decent into a dark tunnel. As it happened, the ride wasn't too bad. That did not stop me from clinging to the back of my seat with both arms, disturbing the honeymooning Italian couple sitting behind me.

At the bottom, you followed a walkway to the cableway to carry you back up the mountain. The walkway took less than 10 minutes, and had little plaques along the way explaining vegetation and old mining wreckage you saw along the way. There was a big line at the cableway. I was the last person they loaded on, and wanted to stay back, because it was brimming full, and I wondered if the cable would hold the weight. I looped my arm around a bar and there was a family beside me with a baby and a stroller. They kept making me move to shift past me, but I never lost my death grip on that bar. The cableway shook a little as it took us over different wheels in the cable. This was my least favorite part. I did get some good areal shots when I wasn't being a complete chicken.

With wobbly knees, I unloaded from the cableway and decided to go ahead and get the skyway over with while I had adrenaline coursing. I walked up to the next level and found myself in the middle of about 30 streaming school kids. I stood about a foot taller than all of them, but I couldn't move at all. I was absolutely not riding the skyway with these kids. They would be rocking it and screaming the whole time, and there might be several dead kids before we got off. Luckily for me, an adult overseeing the group corralled them and they went downstairs. I boarded the skyway and took and cemented position looking out a glass-less window and clinging to bars. The ride was smoother than the cableway, and I got some really good shots of a beautiful waterfall on the side of the mountain.

After Scenic World, we traveled down the mountain to Featherdale Wildlife Park. They had all the basic Aussie wildlife except for a platypus. The kangaroos that I fed were either all babies or were some type of pygmy of the species, but I couldn't find signage anywhere to say anything about it. But they definitely were not regular full grown roos.

I also saw this PASSED OUT wombat. He cracked me up. I thought he was dead until he started shaking his ear, haha.

We next drove through the Olympic village from 2000. Sydney is the only city in the history of the Olympics that made money from the games before the events ever even started. They did some major smart planning for this even. all the venues for the events are still used today, for sporting events and concerts and even car racing. The Olympic village where all the athletes were housed were sold as apartments before they were even built. They housed the athletes for 3 weeks, then were refurbished and the buyers moved into their bought apartments. It was genius.

After our tour of the Olympic village, the driver had somehow convinced many of us to take the Captain Cook Cruise back for 8 dollars instead of being dropped off for free. I can't say I didn't enjoy it, but he talked me into several upgrades throughout the day, none of which I regret, I just wish it had been included in the price at the beginning.

Today I just decided I was going to tour a little more of The Rocks, the area I am staying in Sydney. I went to the Sydney observatory first. The best part of the Observatory was the view of the harbour. This isn't to say the observatory wasn't interested, but nothing photographically notable was seen inside. I did learn about some of the Aboriginal stories behind the constellations.

I then went to The Rocks Discovery Museum (also free, see a pattern?) and learned a lot about the region. One of the coolest things I learned was about the fact that they used to have wooden streets in Sydney. Another thing I found out about was the protests in the '60's and 70's to keep builders from demolishing all the old buildings in The Rocks. They reached a sort of compromise, as I do see skyscrapers like the Shangri-La Hotel towering over me right now as I type of the roof top, but there are also preserved relics like the Australian Hotel, a pub I had a beer at last night just down the street from my hostel.

Tonight I am having rooftop BBQ at the hostel. My roommates all said they were coming as well. I fly to Adelaide tomorrow! I am excited. There are still a couple of things I didn't do while in Sydney, but I will save them from when I am here with my mom in July!