Blue Mountain National Park - 11.9

Pickup was at 7:25 and to gather all the people from the city seemed to take forever. Only good thing was that I got to see different parts of the city while the bus was circling the streets. Throughout the whole time our bus driver/tour guide was babbling about all kinds of facts and telling stories, laughing at his own jokes with rehearsed laugh. At first it drew me insane, by the end of the day I seemed to get used to it and actually even enjoyed some of the stories (if I was able to follow the whole story from start to end that is). One fact that I remember was that there are 4 million people living in Sydney and there are 180 nationalities represented (don't quote me on this as I have no idea where our tour guide got this information).

We made few stops on our way to the Blue Mountain National Park, it was about 1h ride to the park and we were going to make few stops at different locations. First view point was at 875m above sea level and the view was gorgeous of course. Got to take tons of photos :)

The story with Blue Mountains is the following: mountain range is mostly covered with eucalyptus trees full of essence oil, once the sun heats the area the fumes that evaporate from the trees seem blue in daylight. Simple as that.

Second stop in the park was to view a waterfall which is taller than Niagara as our tour guide knew to mention. Then followed lunch in a nice small crafty town called Leura. It reminded me of Ely in Minnesota - main street with small crafts stores, galleries, cafeterias and restaurants on both sides of the road. Oh and the hot chocolate there! Ooooh, that was a good one!

And now the real fun started! We were to take the scenic ride in the Blue Mountain National Park which consisted of:
- cable way that took us down the side of a mountain which was very very steep :)
- a wonderful walk in the rainforest down below
- railway back up on a 52% angle :D Apparently this is the steepest railway in the world

Railway ride was pretty scary actually :) Scariest part was towards the end when it made quite a big jerk. Once we got off the thing our tour guide said that they have had trouble with the railroad all day, apparently it was going only half the speed as usually and the jerk at the end was very much unexpected. But we all made it - phew :)

Before heading to the ferry there was also a park stop to try to find kangaroos in the wild. I have to admit it was semi-wild as it was still quite organized area with camp sites and parking lots. Surprisingly enough there was one kangaroo munching away on the grass right by the stream. It did not seem to be disturbed by the crowd at all and just kept munching away.

Last attraction (well almost ;) ) was to take a ferry back to central Sydney. Ferry was very similar to the CityCat in Brisbane, it did drive quite a bit faster though :) Ferry ride was 30 minutes and very much enjoyable. Arrival to Circle Quai was fabulous.

Made my way back to the hostel, took advantage of a 3AUD for 24h internet for about an hour and later met up with Aivar. Evening was a long one :) Had Domino's (yummm!), sat by the Opera House, walked all the way up to and over the so called "coat hanger bridge" right next to Sydney Opera House (Sydney Harbour Bridge is its official name I believe) - view was absolutely marvellous! Also checked out so nicely lit Luna Park on the other side of the bridge. It was a wonderful evening in lit up city with good company. Back at the hostel by 2:30 :)