Blue Mountains

The Blue Mountains were incredible! I have never seen anything that amazing in my whole life. What I didn't realize was how far away they are! Josh and I took a train to Sydney on Thursday afternoon (which is 3 hours) and then had to take a train from there to the Katoomba (the village we stayed in at the BM) which was almost another 3 hours. We left a little after 3pm and got there a little after 9pm! We stayed in a pretty "crunchy-granola" hostel--we didn't really even know who was working there versus who was staying there which was a little weird but it worked out well.
I can't wait to be able to put up pictures. On Friday morning we got up early and signed up for a pass that let us see the BM's via the skyrail and stuff and did some hiking around.
The mountains are HUGE... it is basically equivalent to the grand canyon but with trees and waterfalls and a temperate rain forest! The cliffs were massive! The pictures we have are amazing but don't do it justice, Josh and I kept saying "It's never as good as what it looks like it real life!"
We did some hiking which was pretty intense I guess a couple of years ago an International Student from Newcastle got lost in the mountains for 3 days without food until some climbers happened to find him! Luckily, that wasn't us... we didn't do anything too crazy but we really want to try and go back if we get a chance to see more of it and do some more hiking.
On Saturday we had a day tour of the Janolen caves. I have never been in anything like these caves. It took over an hour to get out to them (the bus we were on was teetering on the edge of the windy mountains). We then got a tour of the largest cave-called the Lucas cave the tour took an hour and a half. It was massive! The first people to find it must have been so amazed--it goes on forever and there are beautiful crystal formations everywhere. The cave was formed hundreds of million years ago by a river. Anything being around that long is mind boggaling to me.
We had to come back Saturday night which was a pain becasue of rail track work! We had to take a bus and transfer all the way from Sydney back to Newcastle. NOT fun, but it was worth it for the amazing weekend we had. Now that we are back we really have to start mapping out NZ and packing! It is only 11 days away! In the meantime, I have to actually start doing some of my assignments... grrr.