Blue Mountains Tour - 11/03 (Part 1)

After an awfully short night - Sarah and her flatmates had a party the day before- Eva, Vanessa and me left to go to the Blue Mountains Tour.

This tour is one of the many things that are organised by the UTS (like the Learn to Surf Weekend from which photos will follow *g*).
It included a visit in the Wildlifepark and the Olympic Park.

At 8:20 am, about 2omin after originally planed, we started from Central Station and headed out of the City.
The Olympic Park was our first stop.

Kind of a dull place.
If it hadn't been for the Gloria Jean's Coffees and the Kid's Triathlon, I wouldn't even remember it! Luckily we just spend there enough time to wait in line at Gloria Jean's (yes, I just waited in line and went off for the toilets right before I could order. It would have been such a waste of gorgeous coffee, since we weren't allowed to take it with us in the bus...) and see the local toilet facilities (what seemed to be of very high importance for the guide on all locations. I don't get why he was extremely fond of them because they were all kind of hideous but he pointed them out everywhere we went anyway! *g*).















And that is one of the most interesting pics! So don't bother going there if you have to pay extra for it....



Since I figured the Olympic Park as not important I saved my camera's battery power for the real interesting things. That's why I use again someone else's pics. Thanks Eva! *g*






Well, as I said my highlight on that stop was definitely the waiting in line just to not order a coffee at Gloria Jean's. But what else were we supposed to do? There was nothing else (except the toilet facilities which I obediently visited before we left the park...)!












Coffeetime! Well, at least waiting-for-coffee-time...






Blue Mountains Tour - 11/03 (Part 2)

Well, after awfully long twenty minutes of waiting and a tour to the toilets we moved on.
After about half an hour we arrived at the Featherdale Wildlifepark and were greeted from the cutest wallaby baby I ever saw!







Isn't it lovely? I could cuddle it until all of its fur fells out...*g* Just kiddin'!


There was a lot to see but unfortunately we just had time enough for the compulsory pictures of us with kangaroos...













Very cute animals... and this was still so small! Well I was afraid it bites me anyway and so I was veeeery careful before I came close to it! Means: I let Eva and Vanessa go first.... *g*


...and of course us with koalas....

















But there was so much more to see! Wombats ("The most abortive animals on earth"-Fabian Riek, greetings to Germany by the way!), crocodiles (well I have to admit it was just one and it looked like plastic unless you had a very close look....but then you would have seen anything ever again!), frogs, snakes, hundreds of different bids, Tasmanian devils (TAAAAZ!) and so on and so forth!

Unfortunately the time went by way too fast and so we had to leave the koalas and the park behind (but of cause not before we had a look a the local toilet facility so neatly pointed out by our guide! *g*) to head off for our destination... the Blue Mountains!

If you want to see more pics of cute koalas, lovely kangaroos, ridiculously wombats and most impotant the adorable penguins use the link to my online pictures (on top on the right hand side).

Blue Mountains - 11/03 (Part3)

After our visit of the tedious Olympic Park and the exciting Wildlifepark we finally arrived at the Blue Mountains.
We followed the steps down to a pretty crowded lookout and enjoyed the wonderful view!













All those steps! And there were a lot more!!!
OII!!!*g*




The weather was perfect although a little too hot...









The view was so breathtaking that I nearly forgot that we had to take all those steps up again before we could move on to our fourth destination for that day. Well I was painfully reminded! After those thousand steps we all arrived panting at the bus.
I was convinced that my legs would be sour the next day but I was lucky, I didn't feel them at all! *g*

But we had the chance to take a lot of nice pics!


















After this millions of steps we arrived at our fourth station that day. The Three Sister, a formation of sand stones with a nice but totally absurd story of an aboriginal witch doctor who transformed three girls who were in love with three man from another tribe into those rocks when there was a war going on because the love of those three couples was forbidden for some reason... Anyway he couldn't transform them back because he was killed and his magic stick got lost.... or something like that. For those who are interested in the whole story I'm sure there is a lot of stuff in the internet...
I wasn't listening anymore at that time because I couldn't help but wondering why they didn't just elope... It reminded me a little of Romeo and Juliet but probably I'm the only one who is reminded of them...
What ever, we had made it there after that lookout!

Well that is, we nearly had made it... First we had a lunch break in a small and sleepy town near the Three Sisters.
In that small town of about...hm let's say 300 citizens - and that's a high guess! - ... we had a picnic in the middle of the grass strip of the main street (in the hour we spent there I counted about five different cars. Now that's what I call a main street! - Not!). It was quite relaxing and the weather was gorgeous for a picnic!

After an hour of picnic and a short visit in a traditional candy shop (and of course the cumpulsory tour of the toilets...) we arrived at a lookout from which the Three Sisters could bee seen best.
There we took pictures again and then took the bus to our last station of the day.











There were a lot of other pictures but I don't want to annoy you with all of them.... even I'm annoyed by them!



After a lot of driving in the bus it was now time to use our own two legs on a bush walk. Yes, we really did walk on our own for more than just 10min! We walked for 45 min... not on a path, no, that would have been too easy! We took the steps!











But we had a marvellous view! (I could enjoy it when I dared to look up, so about two times! *g* I was afraid to twist my knee or ankle- well I did that three weeks after that but that's another story...)

Thank God we walked downhill and took a scary but pretty funny rail back to the top where the bus home was waiting.
We really needed that, well at least I did, since I couldn't do one step without swearing and complaining about my feet and legs.
















Finally we were on our way home. Completely exhausted but happy and with a lot of pictures to annoy family members back in Germany!