A week in Sydney, Wollongong and the Blue Mountains

Right now we are sitting at the Balmain Backpacker hostel in Sydney and memorizing the past week, which has been amaaaazing!

In the beginning of the week we decided to get out of the buzzness in Sydney and went to Wollongong to get peace. We stayed at a place of Saara’s friends friend, Alex. It was wonderful to take it easy again. We were welcomed so friendly of Alex and his flatmates. We went often to the beach which was by the way the most beautiful we had seen until now, we enjoyed good meals together with our hosts and their friends and swam in the free swimming pool next to the ocean. We enjoyed our stay really much in Wollongong and are so thankful for it to our hosts =)

Arriving to Wollongong!

Posing;)

Saara is amazed by the sky divers

The best breakfast we've had - müsli made by Alex!

Katja is a bit obsessed with seashells...

Wollongong beach

And obsessed with acrobatics...

The first jellyfish we saw, fortunately it was dead

This amazing picture is taken by Saara!

Last night, preparing the food

Crazy finnish girl baking "laskiaispullia"

Our hosts!

They tasted better than they looked;)

Crazy finnish girl posing with the "laskiaispulla"

Fish and chips without ketchup (would have costed 2$!)

A wild pelican?

Cuckatoos!

Our swimming pool!

After Wollongong we went back to Sydney for one night. Our plan was to sleep in the cheapest place in the centre, which was a dormitory for 32 persons, called the "Church". But when we arrived to the hostel they said that we had been upgraded for free to a room for 4 people, with our own bathroom! We were satisfied with their decision because we wanted to get enough sleep before our early wake up the next morning. We were told that up in the church there would have been parties all night long...

Next up was the beautiful Blue Mountains. Our trip there started on Thursday 23.2 when we were picked up from the YHA in Sydney. On the way to the Blue Mountains our guide told us about the aboriginal point of view of the Australian history. It was really interesting and we felt sorry for the aboriginal people. We made two stops on the way, the first one was the morning breakfast of kangaroos that we were fortunate to see. The second one was in a small village where we had our own breakfast. After that we made the first trekking tour and got to see the Three sisters and Wenworth falls, the second trekking tour consisted of seeing the Katoomba falls and taking Australia’s steepest railway uphill. It was really heavy to walk up and down stairs in the mountains in many hours but at the same time really interesting as the guide told us about the nature around us and how aboriginal people use it for daily purposes. For example he showed us how to make make-up from a special rock and how to get natural insect repellent from the bushes.

Kangaroo posing like a squirrel

Beatiful...

Nature-maid make-up advertisment

Our guide was kind of original...

The three sisters

The second day was already planned but we didn’t really expect it to be that though and crazy! We had pre-booked an abseiling trip and we knew that the day was going to end with abseiling down a waterfall. Our group consisted of us two and four men =0. We started the day with learning the basics of abseiling down a 4-meter cliff. After that we already got to try a really hard 15-meter high cliff with a long edge that was hard to climb over (see the pictures, it’s difficult to explain :P). The last (dry) cliff we abseiled down was 30-meters high. It was pretty cool because in the end you had to slide down and dingle in the open air, just enjoying the beautiful scenery around you, at the same time you were nervous cause you had to make sure that you land on the next edge, otherwise you would fall down the cliff and you couldn’t even see the next landing point :S. After these experiences we already felt like winners but we had no idea of what was waiting for us up next. Canyoning was nothing that we would have imagined. We had packed our backpacks and walked pretty far away to a river and put our wetsuits and abseiling equipment on. Then we started to walk in the deep water in the caves. We had to do a lot of water jumps and slides down the rocks. That already was scary. It was impossible to see all the rocks you stepped on in the water and we nearly tripped over them many times and almost twisted our ankles. The only thing that comforted us was our experienced guides and that they told us that there were no dangerous animals in the water =D When we came to the waterfall it was shocking to see how much water there was and how steep the waterfall was. At this point we were exhausted after all the swimming, jumping and climbing but the only way out of the caves was to abseil down the waterfall! We were terrified. They even dared to ask us if we want to get wet or really wet which was pretty annoying at that time. Well down in the waterfall there was water everywhere and it was so heavy when it hit you. It was slippery and hard to get touch of the rope. We both survived with some bruises and scars. Afterwards we think we could do everything else again except for the waterfall. The whole day was an amazing experience and we are still surprised that we dared to do the things we did. One of the guys from our group had a water proof video camera so we have proof of everything we did. In the evening we went out for some beers with the group to change some experiences and have a good laugh =). The next day our bodies ached like hell and we didn’t do anything. We had planned to do a trekking tour on our last day (Sunday) but since it was raining we took the train back to Sydney.

Made it! (picture taken before the terrifying experience in the caves...)

Our room at Blue Mountains YHA

We came back to Balmain Backpackers. We were eager to find work but we were told that it’s really difficult. One of Saara’s friends from Finland heard that we are looking for work in Australia and gave us the contact information of a farm she worked on six years ago and now fortunately we have a job starting from Thursday! We were really lucky with this. Now we have just been chillaxing; yesterday we went to Coogee beach with some people from the hostel and did the walk from Coogee to Bondi and the scenery was of course beautiful. Today is the hottest day we have experienced in Australia so far so we have just taken it easy; sunbathing and probably going out tonight.

With love to all our mateys,

Saara & Katja