River Deep, (Blue) Mountain High

Wednesday:

- Booked a Blue Mountains trip for Thursday and a Bridge Climb for Friday
- Sailed to Manly
- Ate Pizza before going to Sea World
- Saw some sharks and um...
- Sat at the beach and read Larry Bird's Drive from 1989
- Went to dinner with mom for one last time. We ate Indonesian food with mom's co-worker and his wife

Thursday:
We woke up very early to go to the Blue Mountains. Our driver was Steve (STEEVE, HELLO!) and we were joined by three women from England, one older one and a pair of twins. Our first stop was at an Aboriginal Cultural Center. It was great!

We threw some boomerangs, looked at and tasted different kinds of plants and heard about Aboriginal culture. Our guide was Sunny and he concluded his presentation by playing some Didjeridoo. He had been playing for 30 years and he was very good. Then we had tea and moved on.

We headed up the mountain and started with some sight seeing in Jameson Valley, one of the three Valleys in the Blue Mountains. The place was called Flat Rock and there was nobody else there. That trend continued for the rest of the day too.

As far as Blue Mountain trips went, this one was pretty good. It was informative and secluded. The views were very good and as you can see from the pictures, they look very blue thanks to the oil vapor from the eucalyptus trees.

After Flat Rock we saw the three sisters and heard their story, which explains the bird with a million voices (kind of like the guy from Police Academy) kicking around the leaves in the depths of the rainforest. Then we headed down to Megalon valley and had lunch in a very nice place. Then we had one look of the last valley before heading back to Jameson Valley to check out some wild Kangaroos. Two of the females had Joeys (baby Kangaroos) sticking out of their pouches.

On the way back from the mountains, we watched a DVD about Australian wildlife and nature. It really made we want to go to Western and Northern Australia to see what it's like there as well as the desert. All in all I liked the trip very much. Brotherman wasn't as satisfied because he didn't have enough to eat during the day.

Today we slept in and bought a sh*tload of stamps before heading for the Bridge Climb. Our guide was Emma and she seemed very nice but she was a rookie. We had a full group of climbers, most of them from English speaking countries. I was the only one who was there for the second time. I liked this one too and I even got a Master's Degree, um, I mean certificate for Bridge Climbing.

A whopper meal later I looked around for Christmas/postcards, came back to the hotel and wrote them. We ended the day with a visit to the Sydney Tower (not nearly as good as the Eureka Tower in Melbourne) and grabbed dinner from Subway. Now we're watching crappy movies on TV.

I love Sydney and at the moment I'd rank the biggest cities in the following order: 1. Sydney, 2. Melbourne, 3. Brisbane. Melbourne and Sydney will get more attention later while Perth and Adelaide (and maybe even Canberra) have their chances of creeping in the rankings later.

We have no plan for tomorrow, but we will have to change hotels. Or we get to change hotels. Instead of sleeping in the same bed for three of five nights, we get our own beds for the last three nights of my stay.

Have a good weekend everybody!