Another early start (woo!) this morning to go on a 4WD adventure tour to the Blue Mountains - a trip booked for us by Travelbag before we left the UK. Tour pick ups work in a similar fashion to Airport drops offs - spending over an hour circling the city 3 or 4 times to pick up couples from various hotels before starting the 'adventure'. I'm sure you'll appreciate our annoyance when we picked up the last couple from a hotel 10 minutes walk from ours and realising we could have spent an extra hour in bed.
However, this was going to be a good trip so I forgive them.
An hours drive out of Sydney and we arrived at Featherdale Wildlife Park. I LOVE (to the point of being obsessed with) Koala Bears. I think they're the cutest things! So imagine my glee when I got to see and even TOUCH a real life Koala!! Brilliant! This park, although small was packed with native Australian wildlife - Kangaroos, Crocodiles, Dingos, Tasmanian Devils and more. So exciting! We even got a complimentary Clip-on Koala Bear toy!!! Need we continue? My day's complete!!
Just over an hour later I was dragged back onto the 4WD-bus-beast and we headed off into the direction of the Blue Mountain.
Interesting fact: The Blue Mountains are so called because the Eucalyptus trees give off an oil, the fumes of which burn off in the heat of the sun, creating a blue haze (see pictures!). Nerdy but interesting.
I suppose I would describe this part of the tour as 'the Eco-Hour' as we stopped at the Blue Mountains reserve for a short walk to smell the Tea Tree and Citronella leaves.
After stroking a Joey at Featherdale, I wondered weather my choice of Kangaroo Pie for lunch has been a wise one but I tried to put it to the back of my mind! Our lunch stop resided at a restaurant overlooking the mountains within a high-altitude Botanic Garden. Not as impressive as that in Sydney but the food was lovely and I was pleased with my Roo Pie choice! Darren's steak was a bit rare even by my standards and looked like it would start breathing again if he didn't eat it quickly. Yum.
I'm sure you're starting to realise the whistle-stop nature of today's tour!
Next stop - Scenic World, Katoomba. A great place to see The Three Sisters. At Scenic World, you take the steepest incline railway in the world to the bottom of the canyon and then walk the scenic track to the cable car, which takes you back up again. Well, we got off the railway and in the kerfuffle went the wrong way and ended up on a suggested 2-hour trek. OOooops! Good job we spotted this on the map 20 minutes in, else we'd have been in BIG trouble with the guide! Then I left my beloved cowboy hat on the cable car back to the top and had to wait for it to come back. It was still there - hooray!
On our way back to Sydney, we swung by the Olympic Stadium for a quick look before boarding the River Cat back to the Circular Quay to avoid the city traffic. The reason traffic was going to be particularly bad tonight was because it was MARDI GRAS!! That's right ladies and gentlemen, one of the world's biggest Gay and Lesbian parades was on tonight!
I was really excited about this because when you see the Mardi Gras on the TV, it's all music and costumes and dancing and general campness and I thought it'd be really fun! The Mardi Gras in Sydney is also a HUGE social event - everyone goes!
The battery was going dead on the camera at the Mardi Gras so I'm not sure how well the photos came out but check them out - it was absolutely fantastic! I wished we could have stayed longer but having been dragged around all day, we started to wilt pretty early on but if you ever get the chance to go in any city - GO! It's so cool!!
Lou xx
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