Katoombaaa

Hello Beautiful People!

I'm just wrapping up my seventh week in the land down unda! Australia just had daylight savings time yesterday and it's getting cooler and rainier here as move into the fall months (A chilly 66 this morning). Well, today is the first day of my two weeks break! This week I'm going to catch up on some homework, write a couple of papers, and explore sydney. On Sunday the 12th, I'm headed out to Magnetic Island with 5 other girls and Dave! Magnetic Island is right off the coast of Oz, next to townsville and it's in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef area. We're going to be staying in a house right on the beach! We're taking a day trip out to the reef to go snorkeling, hopefully do a little fishing, and of course, explore. It's going to be such a fun trip.
Well, Saturday morning I went to the Katoomba, where the Blue Mountains are, with Sarah, Jess, and Ty. It takes about two hours by train to get there. Jess and I sat across from perfume lady....She was on the train no more than 45min and sprintzed 28 sprays of nasty smelling-old baby powder perfume on her wrist (trust me, we were counting). After she got off the train she started spraying the perfume in the air. People are strange... Any how, When we initially got to the train station we waiting an hour. Within five minutes of the train coming, my three comrads decided to go get tickets. We missed the train. So we waited another hour. When we got to Katoomba we made our way past the quaint little town, down to echo point to check out the three sisters- three large rocks. But it was so misty we couldn't see a darn thing. We made our way down to the "giant stairway". This stairway was amazing- by far the coolest thing I've seen on the trip yet. We climbed down thousands of ridiculously steep steps that were built on cliffs in order to get down to the main hiking trails. It takes about an hour to get down and an hour to climb back up. No picture could truly capture how beautiful this area is. We bushwalked for a while, encountered a bunch of bloodsucking leeches, and fell...a lot (at least I did). The forest was like a tropical rainforest. Everything was wet with mist and the air was heavy; it was beautiful. I saw a couple of really cool birds- some blue and red ones and some type of beautiful wild pheasant. We were planning on camping overnight, but Jessie Cakes wasn't feeling well so we trekked back up the cliff before dark and headed home. We were pooped at the end and I'm still sore, but it was fabulous! I am definitely going back before my time in Oz is over!