The Blue Mountains

So basically I discovered one of my favorite places in the world at the end of my lecture recess: the Blue Mountains. I know what you are thinking. "Blue, how can mountains be blue?!" Fear not my inquisitive compatriots, the mountains only look blue because of the eucalyptus trees. But for the sake of me sparing you the science, the mountains are blue. I did a group tour on my first day there. If you know me, and if you don't know me then you will know this about me by the time you finish reading this sentence, I hate tour groups (pretty anti-climatic, hey?). Just the whole hustle and bustle, the jockeying for position, fighting for that perfect Kodak moment spot, the cheesy tour-guide jokes - I am over it. Additionally, if you read my little blurb about Canadians (now heightened after Montreal knocked the Penguins out of the playoffs) then you already know how frustrating people can be in these tours, especially those annoying neighbors to the north. Short story made shorter, I got to see some cool things, learn some fun stuff, and yeah, it was nice. The day got 100x better when I got to my hostel...as cheesy as that sounds.

In the past two years I have stayed at 16 hostels. To put into perspective of how much I enjoyed the Katoomba International Youth Hostel in the Blue Mountains, it comes in ranked on my power-rankings at number 2. It was awesome. An epically huge kitchen, sitting room, couches and chairs everywhere, the nicest most helpful people at the reception area, my room was cleaner than clean (there were two of us staying in a room for six people), and it had a really nice veranda...WITH a fountain. On Sunday night I went to K-Mart (no judging) to buy a fleece and beanie because I was cold and had walked from the Tropics of Townsville to the moderate climate of Sydney to autumn in the mountains. After my shopping "spree", I went to a grocery store to get the food to prepare my own dinner for the first time since January. I was stoked. I had spicy lentil soup with beans, bread rolls, cheese, strawberries, and milk. Delicious. I literally spent the entire night after catching up on my journal. It was extremely relaxing.

Monday was spectacular. I woke up at 7:00am to pack up my stuff, check out, and eat breakfast (raisins here are called sultanas...therefore I had sultana bran - how exotic?) I had laid out what I will refer to as the "epic hike". It was epic for a number of reasons. First, it was meant to take between 5 and 7 hours. Second, because calling it the "mildly entertaining and slightly physically draining hike" would be an injustice. So, I began my "epic hike" in the direction of Ruin Castle. The hike took me down a valley through temperate rainforest, eucalyptus groves, boulders and scrub and massive fern beds. It was a perfect day - clear blue skies and cool. It took me about three hours to get to the Ruined Castle which is actually not a castle but rather a large rock formation that resembles the decrepit remains of ancient stone towers...ish.

Funny story. Once I actually made it to my destination I couldn't actually figure out how to climb it which as you can imagine was quite disappointing. I could just see and could hear two people standing on top of it so I figured there had to be some way to get up there. I tried everything. I began climbing each side of this monstrosity of a boulder literally running into a dead end on each attempt. Finally I did some fancy climbing and popped up near the top. I startled the people who were up there. Lucky for me my sudden appearance did not cause one of them to stumble off the edge because that would have for sure have put a damper on the mood. They got a good chuckle though because apparently there was an "easy" way up that I had not seen. That, and it was a small tunnel thing that I couldn't have fit in because of my large back-side....skipping ahead. The view was incredible. Once the people left I was up there just sitting on this small rock standing vertical in the center of the Blue Mountains. It was breath-taking.

I did the long hike back to the hostel. Because this blog post is beginning to look more and more like a bad chapter out of one of Bill Bryson's travel books, I will jump to the end. I made it back alive, stuffed myself with cheap delicious donuts, showered and caught the bus back to Sydney. Thanks for listening.