Blue Mountains, Australia / nancy lehet / rtw / great trip

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rtw

great trip

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Blue Mountains, Australia
33° 30' S 150° 15' E
Oct 03, 2006 03:42
Distance 100km

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great trip

Text written in: English

after slothing around sydney the past few days, was time to get on some trails and actually get in a work out. we picked a 2 day trek in the blue mountains east of sydney - the 'treking in australia' book rated this hike as 'medium'....yeah, riiiight. if this was medium, a difficult rating must include a snake pits and maybe a few peeps shooting at you from behind the bushes. sheee-ite! this was hard!

fair enuf we only treked like 10km each day, but of that, maybe only 2km was actually on flat ground. can't remember if I've ever sweated from just walking downhill - the stairs going down on the first day were steep & relentless. and of course you're thinking the whole time that whatever distance there is down, will mean going up tomorrow....

but of course it was all well worth it. we hiked into the 'grand canyon' - P was worried I wouldn't be impressed ("don't expect it to be like *your* grand canyon"). well of course not baby - there's nothing like that - but that doesn't mean I still can't be impressed. the more we hiked, the cooler the views got.

the first day we were above this narrow slot canyon that disappeared down to a creek we could hear but rarely see. there were loads of eucalyptus everywhere (but no koala bears - lazy bums probably can't be bothered to move their butts this far down canyon), huge canyon walls surrounding us everywhere and waterfalls galore.

we saw lizards, parrots, spiders, snakes, eels. and loads of other trekers. all wanting to give us advice on where to hike to... and just figures - of all those peeps, leave it to the group of boy scouts to give us wrong advice. sure, our bad for actually listetning to them, but thank god we ran into a couple other guys (after going back UP hill, I might add. grrrrrrr....) who got us turned back around, downhill, in the right direction. (tho who knows, maybe the scouts were working on their "mess with the city kids" badge that day....)

best part was day 2 hiking out of the canyon - they carved the trail out of this rock wall that went straight up. half the time the trail was under the falls - if you looked up at the water drops it felt like it was snowing. was a little brutal with the packs, but in general, since I haven't been backpacking since the inca trail in peru, it felt GREAT!