OK, so as I said at the end of my last blog, I would write a blog for the Blue Mountains, so here it is.
We were back on the bus and away back towards Sydney for 3pm, we had an hour so drive to the next destination, 'Olympic Park'. The Olympic Park for those of you that remember was built back in 2000 to host the 2000 Olympic games. We weren't actually going to be going in any of the venues, just drive around the park itself and take a few pic's while Mark gave us a bit of history. By 5pm were at the Olympic ferry Wharf were we would leave Mark and the tour bus and grab a 'Captain Cook' ferry back to Circular Quay.
This was a pretty large ferry with a number of large outside decks, the Sun was starting to go down so we would be able to cruise down the river while watching Sunset. What a sunset it was, with some great cloud formations and the fading sun reflecting off the water, it made for some great 'arty farty' photo's (as my friend Mr's Milly's put's it). I think i must have taken around 70 pic's, messing around with various settings on my camera. The good thing about this ferry was that they had a bar, so as we cruised into Sydney harbour i enjoyed a nice cold beer. As we approached the Sydney harbour the sun was now down and the light fading, the lights on all the high rises were on and Sydney bridge and Opera house were also lit up. For me, and its one of the reasons I love Sydney its one of the best sights I have seen and I never get bored of it.
I booked the trip through 'Activity Tours' and it would be a full house with me booking the last seat on the bus. I was to meet today (Friday 30th) at 7.50am at Circular Quay ( I seem to know this place inside and out now). Being situated in Randwick, out of town the tour company the tour company didn't pick up from there, only central Sydney from Hotels and key places. I had an early start, jumped in the shower and caught the bus down to the quay. At 8.10am I was getting a little worried that I was in the wrong place, as I was speaking to the main office the bus pulled up. I hopped on board and took my seat, looking around even at nearly 32 I was the youngest on the bus. The driver, Mark, seemed pretty cool and gave us a little chat before handing the mic round for us all to introduce ourselves. There were India's, Singaporean's, Chinese, American's and as I am increasingly meeting Pom's who have now emigrated to Australia, of these a couple from Cairns and another guy, Mark, from Perth. After introductions and about a 45min ride we arrived at out first destination 'Featherdale Wildlife Park'. As I mentioned in my last blog I really have seen enough animals but Mark the driver had changed my mind a little when he said that we could interact with Kola's, Wallabee's and Kangaroo's quite freely and even feed them. He wasn't wrong, the Park was very more open than the past million zoo's i had seen in the last week or so. I had my picture taken stroking a Kola, which in the 3 times i had been to OZ I had never done, which was quite cool and without sounding like a girl, they were so cute. We then headed into an enclosed but still out door area where many a Wallaby and Kangaroo roamed around. On entry we had chance to buy some food for them, ice-cream cones filled with some sort of what looked like bombay mix.
I soon had them eating out of my hand, literally, I had seen plenty of Kangaroo's and Wallaby's in my time's in OZ but had never been this close never mind fed them, they were so gentle and not threatening at all and as you can see from the photo, he even grabbed my hand while he ate from it. Again very cute. The rest of park was your normal Aussie wildlife, Taz Devils, Cassowary's, Dingo's and endless birds. After the Wallaby and Kangaroo feeding everything else seemed a little boring. Luckily we had a packed day and only had an hour in the park before moving on.
The promised sun that Ed had mentioned as yet was not to be seen, thankfully I had dressed in long trousers T-shirt and Fleece, with a pair of shorts in my bag just in case the weather forecast was actually correct. Was I glad with my choice of clothing. We started to drive up into the Blue Mountains, passing through the town of Katoomba (which i think is a really cool town name), and started hitting various look out points. Mark the driver said that he knew a really good one off the beaten track, and unlike a lot of the other look out points shouldn't be so crowded with tourists, he was right we were the only ones there. As we made a short walk up on to the plateaux the valley and Blue Mountains came into view. The view was spectacular, with the sun now coming out to play the shadows on the mountains and Valley looked amazing, what also was amazing was the wind swiftly blowing across the plateaux, it was fierce and cold. We hastily got some pictures in and headed back to the bus. We were now moving onto 'Scenic World' which was north of Katoomba. Scenic World is privately owned tourist attraction which host's a couple of 'Skyways' (cable cars) and a Sky rail, which believed to be the steepest cable driven in the world with an incline of 52 degrees over about 500m. We had around an hour and half to explore and both the Skyway's and the Sky Rail were good, with the Skyway's offering amazing views of the Blue Mountains and valleys that they surround. The SkyRail was very steep but only lasted all of a minute, blink and you missed it, still not bad and I can now say i have been on the steepest cable driven train in the world.
We were back on the bus and away back towards Sydney for 3pm, we had an hour so drive to the next destination, 'Olympic Park'. The Olympic Park for those of you that remember was built back in 2000 to host the 2000 Olympic games. We weren't actually going to be going in any of the venues, just drive around the park itself and take a few pic's while Mark gave us a bit of history. By 5pm were at the Olympic ferry Wharf were we would leave Mark and the tour bus and grab a 'Captain Cook' ferry back to Circular Quay.
This was a pretty large ferry with a number of large outside decks, the Sun was starting to go down so we would be able to cruise down the river while watching Sunset. What a sunset it was, with some great cloud formations and the fading sun reflecting off the water, it made for some great 'arty farty' photo's (as my friend Mr's Milly's put's it). I think i must have taken around 70 pic's, messing around with various settings on my camera. The good thing about this ferry was that they had a bar, so as we cruised into Sydney harbour i enjoyed a nice cold beer. As we approached the Sydney harbour the sun was now down and the light fading, the lights on all the high rises were on and Sydney bridge and Opera house were also lit up. For me, and its one of the reasons I love Sydney its one of the best sights I have seen and I never get bored of it.
I hope you like the pic's just a couple of the few hundred i took today, I will post more on FB soon. In the mean time, thanks for reading as always and please keep reading. Take care everyone and catch up with you all soon.
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