After a great week in Sydney, we picked up the banana mobile (our yellow rental car!) and headed off for a few hours drive into the beautiful Blue Mountains - so called because the oil from the ecalyptus tree's gives the mountain top a blue haze (enough techno babble..). We stayed in the quaint town of Katoomba, which is the main village and World Heritage site. This is a total Art Deco haven and is completely geared around tourists visiting for the dramatic cliff top and rainforest/bush walks. It has managed to develope without the usual tourist trappings (that means there's no McDonalds or 7-11's!). There was so much to see and do, that a car is the only really way to get around. It is also site of the world's steepest railway - at 51 degree's and the world's steepest cable car that both run from the tabletop down into the rainforest basin. We spent the week visiting most of the bush walks View image and cliff top walks, whilst enjoying the cool humid-free climate of the mountains. We also took a day out to the very interesting Jenolan Caves, which are a large number of underground caves and waterways.
Here's a few of inside the caves View image, we think this one was called beef curtains...View image
The site is also very reminiscent of the Swiss Alps...

All in all, it was avery chilled out week, spent in a great hostel (called the No.14 in Lovell Street) which is a great reminder of how a hostel should be - very clean, quiet and not full of over sexed tenagers thinking they are so cool because they are travelling on budget (of what we'd spent on a good meal out), and think they now how the world runs - oops I think we may have been tramatised by our Sydeny hostel experience...

Whilst on one of our treks, we met up with some fellow Scots with whom we spent some time with. Ewan and Sally had just married and now live in Sydney, Kirsten (Ewan's sister) and John had travelled out from Glasgow for the wedding. We also bumped into one of David's ex-work collegues (Sue and Archie) who migrated to Sydney about 7 years ago - funny the people you bump into when out and about here!
We also encountered another 3 snakes whilst on our walks - all poisonous and one even tried to have a go at David (well I'm not surprised it was scared!)
Here's a couple of the pics we took - unfortunately it's hard to capture the scale and beauty of the Blue Mountains, but here you go...
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