
Blue Mountains is definitely one of my favorite places in NSW. During Easter, I spent a long weekend there camping out and hiking. The views were absolutely sensational.


For the first few days the weather was really poor. It was constantly raining and so cloudy that you couldn't even see farther than 10 meters. The Three Sisters in Katoomba are the big tourist attraction everyone comes to visit, but because of the weather you weren't able to see them.


I camped out in a tent at first (next to an overly full camping grounds in a park that had a no camping -sign), but after a few days of rain I just had to book myself to a hostel to be able to get my clothes dry. I was pondering whether to leave early due to bad weather, but then ended up staying to see how the weather progresses. Fortunately it cleared up after a few days and we got to see the grand views around the mountains.



Blue Mountains is a bit different than most of the tourist attractions in the sense that you don't need to take a tour to get around most of the places over there. You could, but I think you'd have a pretty lousy time going on one. Instead what you want to do is to go hiking by yourself and explore the walking tracks that have been build in the cliffsides.



With a few friends, we went on the the National Pass and Darwin's Walk tracks in Wentworth Falls, which is about 7 hours total if you take your time. It was one of the best moments close to nature I've had so far, and what's best, avoided the big tourist masses Katoomba had.


On the final day before going back home, I decided to try out a tour to the Jenolan Caves, which is a world heritage site of the world's biggest limestone cave formations. On the tour we went to the Lucas & Orient caves in the area, which were pretty interesting and different from anything I've seen before. It was rather challenging to take photos in the dark dimly lit caves, but I think I got some good ones.


The big minus for the tour was that it felt really tedious walking with a bunch of people in a narrow cave listening to a tour guide's futile attempts to tell narrations that would interest all so different 6-year olds, pensioners, backpackers and geology experts in the crowd. Apart from that, it was successful day and I saw some places that just left my mouth open.


There are some more photos in the photo gallery, look them up especially if you like waterfalls.


N.B. I queued this post for publication several weeks ago while I was away, but the autopublication didn't trigger. The trip was on 21st-25th of March.
< Prev | Next > |
---|
Last Updated (Sunday, 11 May 2008 10:22)