Sorry about the interruption, where was I?
We’d just arrived in the Blue Mountains and made it to Echo point, and were keen to explore this beautiful scenery. I asked at the tourist information office what would be a good walk to do for a couple of hours, bearing in mind it was already around 4pm. The route he suggested surprised me by it’s length but since he was the expert, and I’ve been here a couple of times before but not done any bush-walks I was keen to do it, as were Mike and Martin so we set off.
The route took us west along the cliff edge, slowly winding down into rainforest and waterfalls. The alieness of this landscape is what thrilled me the most. The flaura is so different to England, and the smells too. But especially the sounds – the cicadas and parrots and kookarburras. All very exotic sounding to my ears.
The track took us down to the floor of the valley- which meant we had to go down somehow which meant lots of steps…and also meant we would have to go back up at some point too!
It was fun wandering along with Mike and Martin. We chatted away about all sorts of stuff, from the local geology, to the anthropic principle to what we were going to have for dinner in the evening! It was also the perfect time walk, as earlier in the day it had been too hot for hiking, but now it was late afternoon it was still hot, but not as severe.
It took us back east past the rock formation called the 3 sisters, although we couldn’t see them from the bottom due to all the trees. We swung round them and contunued along the valley floor, past the set of steps known as the Giant Staircase which takes you from the bottoof the valley straight up to the 3 sisters….we wisely went past them! The route took us further along the bush to a stairway closer to our accomodation in town….which meant lots of steps anyway! They were pretty hard going, and certainly made you feel the heat. But we all did it without too much trouble but afterwards all we wanted was to find a good bar and haved a long cold drink!
Katoomba is pretty cruel in that respect because the only pub in town happens to be furthest away from the valley, and also slightly uphill! However we got there and enjoyed beers and pizza. It took us about 3 hours to do the walk, and I’m so glad we did it as the next couple days we didn’t get the chance to do anymore bush walks. It is an area I will certainly try to visit again.
The next day was overcast and a thickfog had desended into the valley. This didn’t bother us however, as I had booked us all on a tour to some caves in the region, so we went to town to meet our coach.
The journey itself, which took about an hour, was part of trip, giving us more views of the valley, which is looking particularly green since we’ve had a decent amount of rain in the last few months. It also had some excitement as the driver had to squeeze the coach through single-lane tracks which balanced on the cliff edge…one false move and we plummet! Was a bit silly really, as our coach wasn’t even half full, they could have got away with a much smaller one.
Anyway, we arrived at the caves and had tickets to see two of them: Jenolan cave and Orient Cave. The cave complex is so extensive you could spend a week and not see all of them. I’ve seen a few caves in various places around the world. These were probably the best I’ve seen. The Orient cave in particular is spectacular, it is chock full of features of all shapes – stalagtites and stalegmites make an appearance of course. I also like the way they presented them – with nice lighting picking out the features which the guide could change to highlight different parts. One guide took us into the Catheral chamber of Jenolan cave,and as we walked in were greeted to Land Down Under by Men at Work! I found that amusing, being in a cave in Oz with this piping out (the point being to highlight the naturally good acoustics of the chamber).
The tour took all day, and it was evening when we got home. We went back to the studio to get ready to go out, but decided we had timeto watch a film. The studio had an eclectic mix of DVDs! From Life is Beautiful (or La vita è bella – Italian film) to Surf Ninjas. Well…obviously we had to opt for Surf Ninjas! I personally was disappointed by the lack of surfing in this film.
We went to a really nice Italian restaurant in the evening. A cosy place, with a nice atmosphere and an owner who obviously took great pride in his work. I always think it is a good sign when the owner personally takes orders…and doesn’t bother to write them down but memorises them instead. It’s also a good sign when I can manage to fit three courses of food in, which I did!
The next day the dense fog had thickened. It made it pointless going for a bushwalk, since we wouldn’t have been able to see anything! It was also pointless going to a viewpoint for exactly the same reason – so, after a slap-up full English breakfast (yeah….I did eat rather a lot this fortnight!!!) we caught the train back to Sydney.
I can’t remember what we did when we got back, but I think we were probably all pretty tired and didn’t do a lot. Martin went to do a few laps of the pool. I went to buy house essentials and Mike got his hair cut. I think we went to Maya (best local ever!) for dinner in the evening with Farz, and it might also have been the night that we watched the film ‘21‘ (good film).
Just as well we saved our energy, since the next day we went and had…..surf lessons!! This was actually Jarrad’s idea – and I kind of ruined his plans a bit by deciding it would be a good thing for Mike and Martin to do too when they got here. We got the train to Jarrad’s place, who opened the door looking every bit the surfer dude in his boardies and he drove us all down to Wollongong where we were to have lessons. I hadn’t told Mike and Martin what we were doing, but I think they had suspected long before!
I have tried surfing before, but never had a lesson so it was good to finally understand how exactly you are supposed to go from horizontal to standing in one movement! Not that it helped much. I caught a few waves, but only stood up once….but hey I stood up! Didn’t exactly surf as I fell off with shock at standing up, but it was more than I’d ever managed before. The thing that got me though was that I was worn out within about ten minutes of trying, and seemed to be the only one worn out too. It wasn’t until the end that I realised if I stayed in shallower waters I got less tired and also caught more waves….baby waves that I could handle! Jarrad was good – he’s only had one lesson before but stood up most times. Not modest though, he said in the car ‘I went out to catch blue waves (before they break) and I caught one, stood up and thought “yeah, I look good” ‘!!!!
We grabbed fish & chips from the palce Tony reckons is the best fish and chip shop (in the world?) and they were indeed go. We ate them in a park nearby….with a family of opportunistic magpies hanging around!
This day also happened to be the start of the Sydney festival, in which loads of gigs and events are put on around Sydney- a lot of them free, so after we’d got changed we headed out to catch some of the music. It was a beautiful evening, and we started off in the Domain watching The Cat Empire who were awesome live . A real lively mix of latino and ska beats! We also had the stunning backdrop of the cityscape right next to us, and the orange sky as the sun set. Was really cool. We headed off after they finished and found ourselves watching some wierd pipe organ which they played with flame throwers…didn’t quite work though as you could hardly hear it in the open air, and being situated next to DJ Medhi and his dance tracks didn’t help! It was heaving, and the marshals had closed off some of the areas since they were full (the ‘areas’ being just streets in the city centre….however they are wide enough to take concert sized crowds) so we missed out on Ajax, but went back to DJ Medhi to dance. It was fun, but too squashed to be comfortable so after a while we headed to the Domain again to watch Grace Jones – you read that right. The 80s pop icon is probably in her 60’s but still giggin’! Was interesting to see her, I recognised a song or two and she had some impressive hats! But I was tired from all that surfing, and I think most of us we done for, so we went home. Wow I ached for days after that!
Sunday. What did we do on sunday? Oh yeah, I remember. Mike and Martin went on a Hunter Valley wine tour…but I stayed at home and had a day to myself. I was worn out, and needed a bit of me time, and I was due to start work again the next day so I was worried I’d burn myself out before my work had even begun. Certainly wasn’t looking forwards to resuming the 5:30am starts. Mike and Martin seemed to enjoy their trip – bringing back yummy gifts of wine and marinaded cheese (the cheese is all gone btw…I added it to 90% of the things I cooked in the last few weeks, it tasted so good! And my housemates are now on a quest to recreate it for ourselves!).
On monday I went to work, and said my goodbyes Martin in the morning since he was flying out in the afternoon. Work was pretty normal…and I got back with enough energy to take Mike out for dinner at Darling habour. I’d taken Martin there, but not taken Mike yet so I was glad I got the chance to since it is one of my favourite areas. The next day after work Mike took me and my housemates out for a meal. We settled on a woodfired pizza place nearby, which did really interesting pizza topings. Mine included avocado and pumpkin seeds and roquet on it! After that I decided not to give in to the temptation of sleep, and went with Mike to the Establishment – a bar which does a salsa night every tuesday. We managed a bit of dancing together – Mike does Sarock so we adapted it to a salsa beat, and even made up our own Meringue! I also spotted a few people from my salsa class, who said hi and many promised me a dance later. I danced with one guy, Pete, who has picked up a lot of new moves! However, I ran out of steam before I got to dance with any of the others and decided to go home. However I would like to go again!
On wednesday I had promised Mike we’d go out to some more the Sydney festival gigs, but by the time we had cooked dinner the one free show had already started and I felt so tired. My early morning starts and two nights out just finished me off – the wine probably didn’t help! So I felt bad for not going out, but I just couldn’t manage it and we had a night in. The next day Mike left too….so when I got home from work there was no one left to entertain 
So that is what I did over xmas and new year….and why I didn’t get a chance to write until now! The last few weeks I’ve just been getting back to normal. Doing a tonne of washing and re-stocking the fridge which had been left untouched since I ate out every night, and enjoying lazing around not doing anything last weekend. Well – I did do something, I went to see a series of short plays at a theatre in Newtown with Tony and Nadia to watch a friend of Nadia’s who I’ve met before in one of them. Was very good. We went for a Thai meal afterwards too (I’m still eating out lots….in fact we’re about to go out tonight!!).
Later tonight I’m going t with Farz to watch one her friends play in his band – heavy metal – should be fun!!!
