The Blue Mountains

First, thank you again for reading my blog. It's fun to share my experiences with you! Since Internet is quite expensive here, my blog posts will come in spurts. I also apologize for any misspellings, for the lack of pictures, and for the lame blog template. I am currently unable to upload photos and have little flexibility in choosing blog layouts at the moment. But thank you for following along :)

I spent the last two days in the Blue Mountains about 2 hours outside of Sydney. Base camp was in Katoomba, a quaint little town built up on one of the mountains. The Blue Mountains National Park is about the size of Holland, and it contains the highest points in Australia (the rest of Australia is quite flat). The Blue Mountains get their name from the eucalyptus trees that inhabit the area, as their leaves give off a blue hue when the sun hits them. Guess what else lives in eucalyptus trees... Koalas! Eucalyptus leaves are the only thing that koalas eat, but the leaves do not give them enough energy, so the koalas have to sleep 19 hours a day. Not a bad life.

Actually, the Blue Mountains are not mountains at all, they are all plateaus. A local Aussie from Katoomba described it by saying "It's like the Grand Canyon... with trees!". All of these trees are part of the temperate rainforest in Australia. Also, Katoomba is an aboriginal word for "A Place of Many Waterfalls" (also known as... Ryann is going to love this place)!

We started the first day with a hike to Wentworth Falls (a 260 meter waterfall named after one of the three explorers who first ventured into the Blue Mountains, excluding the aborigines of course, who have been inhabiting Australia for 40,000 to 60,000 years!). Along the way, we saw kangaroos out in the wild, just grazing in an open meadow. One kangaroo even had a little joey in her pouch! Brandon brought up that the kangaroo is to Australia as the deer is to the United States, meaning that they are fairly common to see out in the wild, tend to hang out and graze close to people, and are hunted for sport.

The kangaroos we saw were Eastern Gray Kangaroos, named for their color and the fact that they live on the East Coast of AUS. In fact, many names for flora and fauna in OZ (another way to refer to AUS) are quite straight-forward and obvious. The Western Gray Kangaroo is gray in color and can be found on the West Coast. The Red Kangaroo is red in color and lives in the Red Center of Australia. Furthermore, the squiggly gum tree is a gum tree that has squiggles in it's bark. These squiggles are made by moths.

On the hike down to Wentworth Falls, our guide pointed out lemon tea trees and peppermint trees, both of which have leaves that smell just like lemon and peppermint and are used to make teas, yum! Our guide also showed us numerous funnel-web spiders nests right along the trail. If you remember from an earlier post, the funnel-web spiders in Australia are the most poisonous of their kind. They do not like the sunlight, so they burrow down into the leaves and pine straw, creating a funnel out of their web (more obvious naming) with an opening the size of a dime. They usually don't come out in the daytime unless provoked.

An aside, venturing into the Blue Mountains was my first trek into the bush. Our guide was very strict and made sure that we understood that the dangers of the bush are very real- snakes, spiders, falling trees, getting lost, etc). You can die from a funnel-web spider bite within two hours, if not sooner, and it takes about that time for any emergency aid to get to you. Nowadays, falling trees and branches are the number one killer of bushwalkers. When there is little rainfall, like in the summer months, the eucalyptus trees stay alive by storing all of their water in their trunks and shedding their dried out branches. There is also a bug that eats out the inside of the eucalyptus trees and kills them, but there is no way to identify which trees have been affected until they fall.

After hiking to Wentworth Falls (a medium level hike that I think would be labeled "difficult" in the States), we ventured over to a lookout of the Three Sisters and Solitary Mountain, two famous plateaus/outcroppings of rocks. It was beautiful!! After climbing down into the rainforest valleys, we took the Scenic Railway back to the top. The Scenic Railway is the steepest railway in the world, and was originally made to haul coal up from the coal mines that are dug through the mountains. The mines are no longer active.

In the evening there was a vintage car show in the Katoomba City Square. We wandered through there for a while, and it was neat because most of the car owners were dressed in period wear, like from the 1930's. It was fabulous! Brandon and I spotted a 1931 Ford Model A Sport Coupe, which is nearly the same as Georgia Tech's mascot, the Ramblin' Reck (a 1930 Ford Model A Sport Coupe). But the 1931 Ford at the car show wasn't as nearly as awesome as the Ramblin' Reck, mainly because this particular Ford was red and black... VOM! The car show ended with a swing dance under a big white tent and with the sun setting over the Blue Mountains from Cahill's Lookout, which Brandon and I literally ran to so that we didn't miss the sun dip behind the mountains.

On the second day in Katoomba, Brandon and I went ABSEILING AND CANYONING! What an extreme adventure! I still can't believe that I did this. I'd never heard of abseiling before, but it's similar to repelling. You get hooked onto a rope at the top of a cliff, and you abseil to the bottom, or to the next ledge. The day trip ended with an abseiling off of Empress Falls, a 30 meter waterfall!

So we joined a group of six travelers and two guides, all around our ages. The male guide Tim was, mmmmm Aussie. Also in our group were Nick from New Zealand who is interning in Sydney for Merril Lynch, Sarah from Ireland who quit her two jobs back home to travel for a year in Australia, another Nick who's a local from Sydney, and Biorn from Belgium. We practiced abseiling on a 3 meter dry cliff, then we moved to a 20 meter dry abseil, and then a 30 meter abseil (7 abseils in the morning among these three cliffs). On the 30 meter abseil, you spend the last 20 meters hanging in mid air as the cliff face is too far underneath for your rope to reach. So you just slide down the rope to the ground whilst looking out at the vast expanses of temperate rainforest and tall plateaus. Heaven.

Here's some terminology for you- the guided standing at the top who hooks you in is the "chucker", and the guide who stands at the bottom with the safety rope is the "catcher". So you chuck and you catch. I very much enjoyed being chucked over a cliff. Hah and the first person to abseil is always called the "knot tester".

We took a break for lunch and then put on these awful (I mean wonderful) wet suits. They were extremely thick and difficult to put on and move in. It reminded me of putting on the LZR for swim meets. And of course we were dripping sweat while pulling these on, but it all just makes the frigid canyon river water more appealing. The wet suit did the trick though- it was very warm and protective from rocks in the river. After "slipping" into our wetsuits, we threw our dry packs onto our backs and went canyoning, which means slipping, sliding, jumping, and crawling through the river deep in the canyon. At some points you had to jump down 3 meters into the water to proceed to the next part of the river. It was super fun, but it was also tough to swim with the wetsuit, tennis shoes, and the backpack, so it was a bit unnerving.

And then you get to the waterfall.

And the only way down the waterfall is to abseil over the edge.

Yes, you put your feet right on the lip of the cliff where the water is rushing over. In the first two meters off the lip, the rock dips under, so you jump backward from the lip, swing under the waterfall, and plant your feet on the dry rock underneath the overhang. But this is only a brief respite, as the rest of the abseil you are proceeding down the 30 meter waterfall with water pounding on your head and only slippery, slimy rocks to place your feet on. It was crazy fun!

There are parts that I don't remember from this abseil, mainly because I was so focused. I kept telling myself out loud to sit back, since I needed to apply a lot of weight to the rope to get it to slide through the Figure 8 Ring, since the wet rope created way more friction than the dry ropes earlier in the day. I remember about half way down the waterfall that I was forgetting to breath haha, but other than that it was just pounding water :) And then when there were only 4 meters to go, the Catcher called out to jump, and that's when I pushed off of the waterfall backward, let go of the rope with both of my hands, and landed in the pool of water at the base of the waterfall. Pure ecstasy!

Side note: the guides said that I had the best waterfall abseil of the day, like a pro :) All of the other guys face-planted on their way down, one guy even flipped upside-down! Face-planting happens when your feet slip off of the rock and you swing into the cliff face first. At Empress Falls, this happens so often due to the slippery rocks that the face-plant has been dubbed the Empress Salmon, because you end up sliding down the waterfall on your belly, with your hands pressed to your sides, face against the cliff. Fun stuff to watch!