Blue Mountains!

So, this past Sunday I got to go with a group form my school to the Blue Mountains. These are mountain ranges about two hour out side of Sydney. They are absolutely beautiful. We all had to be ready to go at 7:30 a.m. as we were supposed to leave at 7:45 but the bus had some problems and was 30 minutes late so at about 8:15 we took a tour bus to the Blue Mountains.

We drove an hour and a half we drove to a place called Featherdale Wildlife Park, here we got to play with Kangaroo's, Koala's, snakes and see even more animals than we did when we first arrived. This place had a Tasmanian Devil, who the entire time we were there ran in circles around his home. The had Dingos and bats and all sorts of birds but my favorite was the albino wallaby. Which is basically a smaller version of the kangaroo. He was so cool! He was beautiful. We left here by about 11:30 a.m.

Then we headed to a small town where we grabbed lunch, and by this time we were hungry because we hadn't gotten any breakfast, as the school doesn't serve brunch on the weekend until 10:30. My friend Ashley and I got fish and chips from a small take away store. It was cooked fresh in front of us and was really good. The French Fries reminded me of Eastwood's during the summer. :)

After lunch we headed out to Echo Point Look out where we got our first glimpse of the the Blue Mountains. The reason they're called the Blue Mountains is due to the eucalyptus plants which grow on the mountains they give off a bluish vapor and from a distance it looks as if the mountains are blue. While we were there we met an older man that was full of stories about the mountains and most importantly about the Three Sister's which is a rock formation at Echo Point.

The tale of the three sister's in one version is that three women of one aboriginal tribe wanted to marry three men from another tribe. But the tribes leader did not like this and in order to stop them from marrying the men he turned them to stone. In the pictures I'll post you'll be able to see them.

After going here we headed off to Scenic World where we all scaled down the mountain it took about 45 minutes to walk down. It was terrifying because all we had to keep our selves from going down the side of the mountain was our feet and a railing. The walk down is really hard on you knees due to the steep angle of the mountain and the repetitiveness of going down the side. Going down we got to see multiple water falls and get to be with in ten feet of one. once we got to the end of the trail our tour guide talked to us about the mining that used to take place in the Blue Mountains and then we hopped on the steepest train in the world. And by 'train' I use the word loosely as it was a seat that was sat at about an 45 degree angle and we were caged in by metal on two sides with no set belts. In other word it was terrifying. It was probably one of the scariest things I done in a while!

After we got to the top we got back on the bus and headed to Princess Rock which is a beautiful sandstone rock where we got to see yet another water fall and chill out there for a while.After this we had a 2 1/2 hour drive back to Manly and we were all really tired by the end of the trip. My roommate and I were both in bed by 10:00 that night.

The Blue Mountains were beautiful and there are no words or pictures that will ever do them justice. You'll just have to come see them for yourself.