Day 100

A little view of the falls!

The girls in The Blue Mountains

Monday 12 Dec 2010 – Day 100

Today started early!! I was sharing a room with Jennifer Parsonage, Andrea, Lisa and Donna – plus there was a 6^th bed that belonged to someone unknown – The only thing we did know about her is that she appeared to travel the world carrying enormous amounts of dirty clothes in a black plastic bag and that she wanted to use every nook and cranny in the room to hide her masses of stuff. We did briefly meet her at about 8am when she arrived with some pissed up bloke who appeared to want her to get her tits out a lot, but she didn’t comply with his requests! They stayed in the room for no more than 10 minutes before going back out, probably to find the first booze shop to open!!

We all managed to find our stuff in between all of her shite and actually got out of the room before 9am! Lisa and Liv then stayed in the Hostel to make sandwiches and look after the bags, whilst me and the others took the 15 minute walk to Europcar, where we had booked 2 hire cars for the week.

The guy behind the counter did us a good deal, allowing all 4 of us to drive both of our cars – a big ford and a Holden – both of which are really smart, automatic and pretty fast! The strange thing about the guy in europcar was that even though he was dressed in shirt and tie, he was wearing flip-flops (Thongs over here!)

Anyway we got our cars and headed back to the Hostel, but on the way I remembered that I had left my backpack at the bloody hire car office!! Fooook!! I was getting stupidly stressed with myself for being such a dick, but after we packed up the cars, said goodbye to our new mate Mary and drove back to the office, I was relieved to see the bag still there and I got all my stuff back. Phew!

We headed off out of Sydney toward The Blue Mountains and enjoyed the freedom of having our own transport for the 1^st time in 3 months. It was really nice to drive a car again and I think everyone will want a drive soon!

We arrived in Katoomba and our new Hostel about 12.30pm and when we walked in we were all pleasantly surprised to see a really nice. Large homely hostel – mush different to the busy overcrowded ones we had stayed in in the city. The guy behind the reception was a legend and after booking us in, gave us a hand with our bags and showed us to our rooms, before giving the girls a little tour of the place. He hinted that grog isn’t allowed, but winked at the same time to indicate that it would be OK!! There was also a mess up with our rooms as we should have had a double and a quadruple, both en-suite. But the quad wasn’t en-suite, so we were given an $80 refund! Bonus!!

We then headed out for the afternoon to walk to the 3 sisters rock formation and along some of the lovely walks here in the Blue mountains.

We actually drove out to the Tourist place, where the 3 sisters walk starts from an dnearly had heart attacks when we saw the cost of parking!! $9.20 for 2 1/2 hours!! We had two cars as well so it was even worse! But we paid it eventually and then headed off on our walk. The 2 sisters was pretty close to the car park and only took 15 minutes or so to walk to, but it was pretty spectacular.

We then decided to continue along the paths and head towards a couple of waterfalls about 3km away. It was a really nice cool afternoon, with the odd bright ray uof sunshine and we found a lot of lookout spots to see the views over the gorge below us. As its December the conversation turned to Xmas and Xmas presents, favourite Xmas carol and all sorts of shite! Live even gave us a rendition of her favourite carol, although I cant remember what it was.

On the way we passed a few people including a guy and his missus, just sat on a lookout post, playing his guiter. It did remind us a little of 'The Glee Club' - Hi you guys!!!

We reached the falls after a couple of hours and werent dissappointed. They werent massive but it was worth the walk and so we stayed for a few minutes enjoying the cool air and the view. Jennifer Parsonage did attempt to get a photo taken on the falls, but on her way off them she slipped and fell on her arse! Luckily there is free laundry in the Hostel!

It was then a climb back up to the road and a 45 minute walk back enjoying the sunshine and the views.

Back at the cars we climbed in and drove the short distance back to the hostel, before heading out to buy booze, doing the laundry and getting on the free internet!! This Hostel really is cool and a lovely change from the ones in Sydney. Tonight, we will be cooking for ourselves again and enjoying a glass or two of wine, before a reasonably early night and a full days walking tomorrow!!