Blue Mountains

Last weekend our group took a trip to the Blue Mountains which are located about 2 hours outside of Sydney.  We first stopped by a Wildlife Park and saw more animals, one being that crocodile.  We watched him get fed and heard a little bit about his life... apparently he was eating tourists, adults and children, and so he was taken out of the wild and put into a zoo.  In this zoo, however, he began eating all of the crocodiles that were put into his cage with him (his mates), so they finally moved him to this particular park in a cage by himself.  He was pretty ferocious I must say.

This little guy down here is an Echidna.  It is a marsupial that lays eggs and native to Australia.  This is the first time we have seen one of these fellas in real life, although they are one of the common animals in pictures that you see everywhere around here.

We saw a bunch more kangaroos, but the most interesting were the Albino Kangaroos.  They looked so strange I thought.  Also, they can't survive in the wild because there is no way for them to blend in.. so I guess they get eaten and die out.

Oh I almost forgot, we got to pet koalas here and get our picture taken with them!  I can't get the picture to upload that I have of me with the koala, but just so you know - I do have one =)

After the Wildlife Park we drove to a place called Wentworth Falls and began the 1,000 Steps Walk down the mountain.  Everyone was concerned about how we were going to get back up the steps, but as it turned out, we got to take a cable car type thing back up to the top.. thank goodness!

These three peaks are called the 'three sisters'.  There is an Aboriginal legend about three sisters and their witch-doctor father.  I can't exactly remember how it went, but they named these three mountains after the sisters!  

This is Vanessa and I posing in front of the Blue Mountains.  They appear blue because of the haze that comes off of the Eucalyptus trees.  It was a tough little trek down the mountain, but definitely worth it because the views were amazing, the weather was also amazing there.. it was slightly more chilly than what it has been in Sydney!

On the hike, we stopped in this one cave and our tour guide showed us how to do an echo.  She said that, from a young age, Australian children learn to say "Koooeeee!" if they get lost in the woods, so we all did it and it echoed back to us.  I tried to upload a video of it on this blog, hopefully it will work!  This is the short video clip of the group doing the echo...  (just press play!)

Finally, we stopped at this little town called Lura for lunch.  It was very quaint and had a bunch  of neat little ships, including a candy shop that had candy from all over (including American candy!).  So, needless to say, everyone from our group were buying their favorites that we cannot get here.  I bought some Junior Mints, a Reeses Cup twix bar, and a Cadburry Easter Egg.  It was all great, except they did not have Mr. Goodbars, so that made me sad.

The Blue Mountains trip was very nice over all and I thoroughly enjoyed it!