The Blue Mountains Tour

Today, we headed to the Blue Mountains. The Aussies claim that Blue Mountains is their version of the Grand Canyon. I’ve never been to the Grand Canyon, so I couldn’t really compare it. They call it Blue Mountains because the gum from the Eucalyptus trees gives the mountain a bluish tint.

We got picked up at 730am. First stop was a park 45 minutes outside of the city for some morning tea and boomerang lessons. Our tour guide, Geoff, gave us a quick lesson on how to throw it and we each got 3 tries. My 1st try went straight to the ground. My 2nd, got some air but never came back around. My 3rd, finally made it!!! Rich, on the other hand, had 2 really good throws. One guy threw it and it came straight for us. Our guide jumped right in front of it. It ricocheted off him and hit a lady on the arm. Thank goodness because I was right behind that lady and it would have hit me if it didn’t hit her. Yeah, I know...kinda mean.

Next stop was Featherdale Wildlife Park. The most popular zoo in Sydney is Toranga Zoo, which is in the Harbour and has beautiful views of Sydney. We never made it there. Geoff told us that Featherdale has more of the Aussie wildlife (what we were more interested in), while Toranga has elephants, giraffes, etc. Well, coming right off the bus, one of the guides at Featherdale handed me this bag with a foot sticking out and asked me to take Charlie out of the bag. I had no idea what Charlie was because I’ve never seen that kind of foot before. Charlie ended up being a baby wallaby, a relative of the kangaroo. Well, that was the first experience we had with cuddling the animals. The zoo was small but we basically rubbed elbows (literally) with kangaroos, koalas, wombats (hairy pot bellied looking animals), and emus. We saw Tasmanian devils, dingos, echidnas, penguins (and it was 80 degrees outside), fruit bats, and other animals that I can’t remember the names of. This was definitely the highlight of the tour.

After that we took an hour drive to Sublime Point. It’s a lookout point into the Jamison Valley. Supposedly there were waterfalls before but Australia has been in such a terrible drought. There were major “bush” fires just like the fires that were going on in SoCal last week. Their dam is only at 40% capacity right now. So, they are all praying for rain, which they got by the end of our tour.

We headed to lunch at a Golf Club after. It was a lot better than I expected. There were only 19 people on our tour, which is what I wanted, something small vs those huge coach tour buses.

After lunch, we headed down to Scenic World, where we took a steep skyway cable down to the floor of the rainforest. Rainforests, to me, are cool to look at only for a minute, unless there is wildlife. I know, very un-PC. Here, there were only a few birds. In Costa Rica, it was much better because there were howler monkeys, sloths, toucans, and other cool wildlife. So, we strolled the rainforest boardwalk for about 45 minutes before we got to the scenic railway. The scenic railway is the steepest ride in all the world. It’s basically coalminer cars that go up or down the steep mountain from the bottom of the rainforest to the top of the mountain. It was one of the coolest things I’ve been on but way too short. You are pretty much vertical riding this thing up.

As soon as we jumped on the bus, it started drizzling. We headed to Leura, one of the Blue Mountain towns. That town reminded me of Carmel. They have a famous candy shop there that houses over 200 different kinds of candy from all over the world. If it exists, it’s there. I ended up going to a Christmas store and bought a few ornaments for our first Christmas together as man and wife: a boomerang with the Aussie flag, a kangaroo, and a koala bear.

On the way back, he drove us through the Sydney Olympic Park. That sucker was huge! Unfortunately, he said that they don’t use a lot of the arenas anymore. I think they lost a lot of money building it.

We met a few interesting people on the trip. We sat at the back of the bus and the other people there became our buddies. Nikki was originally from England but has been living in Australia for the past couple of years. Her brother Paul came to visit so they were doing the touristy stuff. Their other friend was from Scotland. I recognized the accent right away and told him how I went to school there. He told us he used to be in the military and actually guarded the Queen for 4 years.

At the end of the day, we all had the giggles. Our guide would use a microphone to give us the facts during the tour. In the front was an older couple that answered him after each commentary he made. He couldn’t finish a sentence before she would start telling him about her own experiences. It was annoying but funny at the same time. The back of the bus just couldn’t stop laughing.

After the tour, Geoff dropped us off at the Paramatta River, where we took a ferry back to Circular Quay vs. driving through Sydney traffic (which is really not traffic at all).



We then headed over to the coolest (literally) bar in the world. It’s called Minus 5. For you Amazing Race fans, think back to a couple of seasons ago, where they made a stop at a bar made totally of ice. They gave us thick down coats to wear and beepers to let us know when our 30 minutes are up. Because of the temperature, no one can stay longer than 30 minutes. I think I was done after 15 minutes….I was freezing!!! Even the glasses are made of ice! You have to hold the glass with 2 hands, otherwise it could slip out. It was slow when we went, only about 6 other people were there. But they said during the weekends, it could be up to a 2 hour wait. They only have locations in Australia and New Zealand. There are plans to open up in NY and LA but our health restrictions are much stricter and they are having problems. This is another must see when in Sydney.



We headed back to Centerpointe Tower for one of the cheesiest things we did. We bought a special when we went to the Aquarium that included the OZ experience. It’s like California Soaring at California Adventures. It’s a virtual reality ride that highlights Australian sight seeing, except it was a B version of it. DON’T FALL INTO THIS TRAP!

For dinner, we tried to find a restaurant that was recommended to us at Darling Harbour. But we were on the wrong side of the Harbour. So, we settled on a steak place. It was really good. We were going to walk over to Star City, the casino, after dinner but we were so exhausted and just headed back to the hotel. Tomorrow was going to be our last day in Sydney.

PICTURES: Sydney Day 3