So this is really not in chronological order, but I guess we’ll all have to deal with that.  The first Friday I was in Sydney, I met 2 really nice American guys, Travis and Dallas, both from California (as about 98% of all traveling Americans seem to be).  Anyway, Travis being the nature lover that he is, had already booked a Blue Mountains tour and without much difficulty convinced us to join him.  So at 7am on Friday morning (which wasn’t too bad thanks to the ongoing jet lag), the three of us were outside waiting for our shuttle.  We got onboard with our rather pessimistic and monotone tour guide Glen, picked up about a dozen more people around the city, and then we were off on our hour journey outside the city.  Glen entertained us by telling us rather boring trivia about Sydney, and then went on for about 10 minutes on the aboriginal culture and how at least Australia is not the first to overrun and terrorize their natives (hint hint, nudge nudge America).  So that’s where I lost interest and tried my best to sleep through his voice.  About 50 minutes in we pull over into a national park, which isn’t too interesting because its all rather brown due to lack of rain in the north.  Then we spent about 20 minutes looking for a wild kangaroo which we luckily ended up finding thanks to another tour group.  They are surprisingly hard to spot in the wild since they just blend into the background.  Tricky little buggers, really.  This whole time, however, I’m under the misconception that this is the Blue Mountains, and as you might imagine, I’m quite disappointed because I’m not seeing the sheer beauty I was promised.  It wasn’t until we loaded the bus and again passed the sign saying ‘National Park’ that I realized this was just a little side adventure.  Phew!

About 15 minutes and some curvy roads later, we reached our first destination—a beautiful lookout point overseeing waterfalls, and gigantic cliffs.  It was absolutely breathtaking.

The cliffs look like they were just sliced apart, that’s how clean the sides were.  And you could see all the different layers of rock, and how time has affected the formation.  Quite nice.  We then took a little stroll down to another lookout—same general area, but a different angle.  And then of course we stopped for ice cream at the nearby icecream truck(??)

 After that Glen gave us some time for lunch in a nearby town, and gave us some options to ponder for our post-lunch activity. 

After lunch, he explained, we would be doing to long walk.  Well…that was just one option.  Here’s the layout—there’s this gigantic cliff and then 1000 stairs leading down into the rainforest valley below, a 45 minute walk through the rainforest and then 1000 steps back up.  The steps are steep—like a constant ladder.  

Then there are a few less intense options—there’s a train and a cable car that go up and down the mountain.  So you could take the stairs down, walk through the rainforest, then take a relaxing and well-deserved ride in a train or cable car back to the top.  You could take the train/cable car both ways, or you could be insane and walk down and back up.  This might not have been so bad if Glen had not given us a time limit.  We would have 2 hours to complete this whole tour and meet him back at the bus at the top.  As much fun as I think walking up stairs are (I kept thinking about how exhausted I felt after walking to the top of a duomo in Italy…and that’s only about 300 stairs on average!) I decided to walk down, take the 45 minute (level) walk and then take a cable car back up…to see the area from a different perspective.  Travis joined me in this really good decision, as did a lot of other people from the group…there were the few however, that wanted to brave the stairs, including our friend Dallas.  I can’t imagine they actually had time to enjoy the sights with the threat of Glen leaving without them lingering in their minds.  But Travis and I had quite a nice time…except for the 10 minutes when an old woman we were with lead us astray and we were walking down this creepy unmarked path for a while.  Other than that it was beautiful.  The main attraction of this particular valley of the Blue Mountains was a rock formation called the 3 Sisters.

Story to follow: There were these three sisters who were in love with three brothers from a neighboring and rival tribe.  This was a big No No, since the tribes were all about war and not about love, peace, and babies.  So in order to protect the girls, a witch doctor was called in.  He turned the girls into 3 giant rocks…why rocks, who knows…but whatever…I guess they couldn’t be run through with spears any longer.  So the girls were supposed to chill as rocks until the war was over, and then the witch doctor would turn them back.  Problemo humungo–witch doctor dies in the fighting and he’s the only one with the power to turn the chicks back.  So they are trapped forever in large, formidable bodies.  

After we got to the top, there was a brief period of time where we thought Glen had left without us, and then he threatened to leave without this one English guy who wasn’t at the correct pick up spot.  No on on the bus noticed that he wasn’t there until about halfway out of the park (whoops!) and Glen actually talked about just going back down and leaving the poor guy.  As I said, Glen wasn’t the best of tour guides.  Luckily we found him and all was right.  Then after a nap in the van we found ourselves back in the heart of Sydney.  We grabbed some beer which we all truly deserved, and went on to a party in our hostel, which I would say is the start of all the crazy adventures that followed.