January 4
After 2 days in Brisbane, we set off on another short flight back down to Sydney. This time we didn't stay in the city center, though. We had booked a hotel quite a bit on the outskirts of Sydney to have faster access to the Blue Mountains. It took us about 1h from the airport with a train stopover in downtown to get to Paramatta, which is considered the second business center of Sydney. It is west of the city and a multicultural neighborhood with one of Australia's biggest shopping malls located right next to our hotel.
We settled into our hotel, immediately got ready for a hike in the Blue Mountains and jumped on the first train out. After about 1.5h on the train, we got off at a small town called Wentworth Falls, which features, you guessed it, the Wentworth Falls.
The Blue Mountains are pretty much a canyon, so whatever steps you go down, you'll eventually have to go back up....which would come to haunt us later.
The trail we hiked was probably one of the most adventures I have ever done and will ever do in my entire life. I am pretty certain the trail would not be open in the US for fear of getting sued. We are talking steep, slippery steps, ladders, moss covered, rain doused steps that were like straight out of a Tomb Raider game, paths so full of roots that are just waiting to trap your ankles - in short, amazing!
But first, we had to get to the actual National Pass/Valley of the Waters trail, we had to follow the Darwin trail from the town to the edge of the canyon.
This was a pretty easy one, albeit with a few foot traps so you still had to pay attention where you're going. Beautiful trail, though, following this little river, broken up by little water falls here and there.
Once we reached the edge of the canyon, it got pretty busy with people everywhere. As so often in Australia, there were clear warning signs to not go beyond the rails due to even the dry rocks being slippery....and as usual, people ignored it.
We then descended hundreds of steps into the canyon on extremely slippery, narrow and deep stairs. I clutched the hand rail like an old lady. Once a bit further down it revealed a nice view of the waterfalls, which cascade over several steps down. As you can see below, not all paths were fit for normal sized people.
We then reached a point in the hike where you can either go further down into the valley or continue on a path leading parallel to the top instead. We didn't have a map (very smart) and were tempted by the bottom of the valley. Some hikers just arrived at our junction and told us how cool it was to go down to the pool. They said it was only 30min return if you turn around at the pool instead of following the pass through the valley, so we figured we could always do that and continue on the higher up trail if we didn't feel comfortable on the valley trail. Little did we know that the trail down would require us to climb half a dozen ladders, which were sturdy and well built, but nevertheless terrifying; especially when the metal rails are too hot from the sun to touch.
We were rewarded by the beautiful bottom of the waterfalls and after we made our climb back up, we continued on on the parallel trail, which revealed beautiful vistas and exciting terrain.
Unfortunately, what goes down must come up. So I had to face about 900 strenuous steps, which Matt, of course, took in stride. Me, not so much. We pretty much fell asleep on the train ride home and went to bed early and just with a Subway dinner.
January 5
The next day, we made it out to the Blue Mountains a little earlier and got off the train about two stations further west, in Katoomba. Katoomba is filled with travelers and much more of a town than Wentworth Falls was (e.g. we had a hard time finding something to eat there the day before and settled for convenience store snacks). It was quite the walk already to edge of the canyon again but not as pretty as the day before as we simply walked down a town road until we reached the big visitors' center at the edge.
From there you had great view of the so called Three Sisters, which are the main tourist attraction.
Most people don't go further than this platform, which is probably a good thing as the hike down was again quite the adventure. It wasn't called Great Staircase for no reason.
We followed a trail that would eventually take us to the neighboring town of Leura, where we had planned to take the train from. But first was a nice hike through the lush forest once we had made it to the bottom of the canyon.
After reaching the top, we hiked around the edge for a bit longer, including to the Bridal Falls viewpoint, which gave probably one of the most spectacular views of the trip.
And with this, our honeymoon concluded....the last picture taken at the Bridal Falls, lol. The 13h flight home wasn't exciting enough to take any pictures.
After 2 days in Brisbane, we set off on another short flight back down to Sydney. This time we didn't stay in the city center, though. We had booked a hotel quite a bit on the outskirts of Sydney to have faster access to the Blue Mountains. It took us about 1h from the airport with a train stopover in downtown to get to Paramatta, which is considered the second business center of Sydney. It is west of the city and a multicultural neighborhood with one of Australia's biggest shopping malls located right next to our hotel.
We settled into our hotel, immediately got ready for a hike in the Blue Mountains and jumped on the first train out. After about 1.5h on the train, we got off at a small town called Wentworth Falls, which features, you guessed it, the Wentworth Falls.
The Blue Mountains are pretty much a canyon, so whatever steps you go down, you'll eventually have to go back up....which would come to haunt us later.
The trail we hiked was probably one of the most adventures I have ever done and will ever do in my entire life. I am pretty certain the trail would not be open in the US for fear of getting sued. We are talking steep, slippery steps, ladders, moss covered, rain doused steps that were like straight out of a Tomb Raider game, paths so full of roots that are just waiting to trap your ankles - in short, amazing!
But first, we had to get to the actual National Pass/Valley of the Waters trail, we had to follow the Darwin trail from the town to the edge of the canyon.
Once we reached the edge of the canyon, it got pretty busy with people everywhere. As so often in Australia, there were clear warning signs to not go beyond the rails due to even the dry rocks being slippery....and as usual, people ignored it.
We were rewarded by the beautiful bottom of the waterfalls and after we made our climb back up, we continued on on the parallel trail, which revealed beautiful vistas and exciting terrain.
January 5
The next day, we made it out to the Blue Mountains a little earlier and got off the train about two stations further west, in Katoomba. Katoomba is filled with travelers and much more of a town than Wentworth Falls was (e.g. we had a hard time finding something to eat there the day before and settled for convenience store snacks). It was quite the walk already to edge of the canyon again but not as pretty as the day before as we simply walked down a town road until we reached the big visitors' center at the edge.
From there you had great view of the so called Three Sisters, which are the main tourist attraction.
Most people don't go further than this platform, which is probably a good thing as the hike down was again quite the adventure. It wasn't called Great Staircase for no reason.
We followed a trail that would eventually take us to the neighboring town of Leura, where we had planned to take the train from. But first was a nice hike through the lush forest once we had made it to the bottom of the canyon.
The trail then led us past a few smaller waterfalls, cascades and pools back up the stairs and to Leura.
And with this, our honeymoon concluded....the last picture taken at the Bridal Falls, lol. The 13h flight home wasn't exciting enough to take any pictures.
No comments:
Post a Comment