10.17.2012 Sydney

We woke up early this morning (before 5:30am) for a 7am pickup at the hotel for our tour out to the Blue Mountains.  We didn’t know what to expect, but found that what are called mountains here would be hills at home. 

Sydney and its suburbs go on and on.  After an hour on the road and still in the burbs, we arrived at our first stop, a wildlife park with dozens of native birds as well as wallabies, koalas, kangaroos, crocodiles, snakes and a Tasmania Devil sound asleep.  We took lots of pictures of the animals and tried to take a photo of the signage for each so that we know names for each critter. 

Then back to the bus to Echo Point lookout and the Three Sisters rock formation and lunch. At this time, we saw the whats and whys of the lure of the Blue Mountains.  There is a gorge, incredibly deep and steep, that Charles Darwin guestimated took 450 million years to be carved out by ocean tides.   Quite stunning, and that is understated.  There are conflicting aboriginal tales surrounding the rock formations, all having to do with dad, three daughters and magic and a water rat.

After lunch we took a drive to one end of a Skyway that took us across the gorge (with a very high waterfall off to the side) and then the fun started.  We took the cable car to the valley floor.  This was not a gentle descent, but a really steep one.  Once at the bottom, we had a short, though uphill, walk along a raised wooden sidewalk to the steepest funicular in the world.  It is 52 degrees, or 120% or 1.28 depending on which set of number you can relate to.  It was incredibly steep and really fast going up, we were glad we took this one up rather than down.

On the way home, we were driven through the site of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games and then boarded a river boat for the remainder of the trip back into town.  One of the reasons for the boat tour was to avoid the slow rush hour traffic getting to downtown.  We then took the city bus back to Hyde Park and our apartment.