Nov. 3 - 6 - Blue Mountains

On Sunday we flew to Sydney and then took a train to the Blue Mountains for a couple of days of hiking.  The awful fires a couple of weeks ago were in the Blue Mountains, but fortunately not around Katoomba where we were staying.  Katoomba is a town just on the edge of the Blue Mountains National Park.  It seems to be kind of a run down little town, but the national park was spectacular.  It truly is like the Grand Canyon with rainforests - the park goes on for about a hundred miles, and has big tree-filled canyons.  On Monday we thought we would hike along the canyon rim.  It was an 8.8 kilometer (5+ mile) hike that we thought would be fairly level.  It was NOT!  We went up and down and up and down all day and were exhausted at the end - but it was spectacular.  The next day we decided to take the Grand Staircase (1000 steps) down to the valley and hike across the valley through the rainforest.  When we got to the other side, we went up another 1000 steps to get to the rim again.  Somehow this was a lot easier than the first day, and we were really happy that we did it all.  Aside from the scenery, we saw the "elusive" lyrebird and lots of sulfur-crested cockatoos.  We did not see any snakes or lizards, but the cicadas were deafening!

Blue Mountain view - the blue haze is from eucalyptus oil in the air