The Sydney Trip - Part Two

Sunday

Blue Mountains

An early start today. This was due to a 3 hour drive to the Blue Mountains located outside Sydney. First stop was the Janolan Caves, which was along a very narrow, twisting, mountain edged road (my favourite). To enter the area you drive through a cave mouth, from which many of the walks originate. When you arrive there is a board listing the walks and the times, several were already sold out, but it was still difficult to make a decision. In the end we did the most popular walk which featured a bit of everything (underground rivers, crystals, big cave spaces). I was slightly concerned that it was listed as a strenuous walk on the board, but this was due to the number of steps, other walks also involved ladders and pot holing (or as they called it plug holing, which sounds as if you might not fit through).

The walk through the cave was guided by a very enthusiastic American lady, we were accompanied by many other people of all ages, in particular 3 older Italians who paid little attention to the guide possibly due to age or the language barrier, but it was funny when after telling everyone not to use flash photography as we were in this special cave where there was special lighting and music effects to enjoy and that as soon as it was over you could take as many pictures as you wanted they proceeded to use a flash on a camera and a bright light on a video camera throughout the whole thing, exclaiming at one point that they didn’t know how to turn it off (it was funny but it’s probably one of those things you had to be there for!).

After the caving we headed off down the twisty, narrow road again this time with a coach in front (the road is 2-way, but the coach cleared the route). We stopped off at a few nature parks, saw a waterfall, the 3 sisters (3 rocks), and a lot more of the mountains.

So a little weary and a little wet (it had rained as we viewed the waterfall, we had not gone under it) we returned to Sydney.

One of the places to visit in Sydney is the Fish Market and it was on our list of things to do, although I don’t think we had planned to do it when most of it was shut. Although this is what happened and it was fantastic as we went for a Chinese meal. The restaurant was up a flight of stairs (many good restaurants have been found up a flight of stairs) and was very busy. The food was fabulous, Andy plans to return whenever he can it was that good.

Additional: Naz decided to play a joke on me whilst in the caves and told me that the cave tour continued up this ladder, I couldn't remember whether this tour included ladders or not at this point, so I kinda freaked out. NOT FUNNY.