The Blue Mountains
4th day in the blue mountains, we decided to do another hike, a little farther a field this time outside of Katoomba near the neighboring town of Blackheath. Called the Grand Canyon hike and it lived up to it’s name.
Down through rain-forest and waterfalls to begin with into a narrow, deep canyon, walking on a ledge about halfway up the canyon. Then descending into the bottom of the canyon, along the stream. This stream gets much larger after rainfall.
After hiking in the base of the canyon for a while the trail veers off and goes up to the top of the canyon wall and then opens out with views of a huge canyon. Different than the one by Katoomba but equally impressive.
The rest of the hike was mostly straight forward along the top of the cliff with numerous overlooks, quite a few kinds of butterflies and some lizards, ending with a 750 meter dash attempting catch the last bus of the day back to Katoomba. This attempt was successful with not a second to spare.
I’m very impressed with the Blue Mountains, I don’t think I’ve ever done this much hiking in one place before. Usually I end up only being somewhere a couple days and doing 1 hike. Here I’ve done 3 hikes, in consecutive days all of which were different, interesting with stunning views. Very good.
I’m also starting to get ideas about the rest of my stay in Australia, where I want to work, where I want to go etc. The more I hear/read/see the more places I want to go here. Right now about as far as my plan goes is Newcastle for Christmas, Sydney for New Years and then down to Melbourne to look for a job, maybe for a month or 2, maybe longer. I really want to get to Perth and the West coast, Tasmania as well as the obvious destinations on the East coast. Maybe I’ll even get up top here too…. I can’t believe there’s only 11 days left in 2008, what a year it’s been!
Tags: Australia, Travel
Adam
Australia is where it’s at these days. Maybe I will go next year. I would like to go to Sydney and Perth. The pictures you took are fantastic. Thanks for the information on hiking. I live in AZ, and I do like to hike the mountains….Perhaps, I’ll be hiking in Australia in a few months.