What color are those Blue Mountains, anyway?

Wednesday was a half day of work and then we set off for the Blue Mountains. PopPop wondered what color the Blue Mountains are, so Charlie has spent the days asking if we’re in the Blue Mountains, because they’re not blue. For that matter, they aren’t really mountains either, just HUGE gorges. In the end, he decided they should just be called Mountains. Ithaca, NY has some tough competition here. They’re just about a two hour drive from Sydney, so easy to get to in our car, but the train goes right there too. We’re sort of wishing we had tried them before, but remembered that the weather here can be much cooler than Sydney and so waiting to spring was probably the right choice. We hiked from the Conservation Hut (a café) to Empress Falls, along the National Pass, to the Wentworth Falls. The trail was first made in 1908 – carved along the cliffs and over the waterfalls - and renovated in 2008. It’s not possible to capture the scale in pictures.

The final leg of the hike was from the bottom of the Wentworth Falls along some steep, steep stairs: 100 meters elevation in a short time. We’re happy to report that Mike and Daniel took the shortcut back to where the car was and picked the persons with short legs and their guardian up in the carpark at Wentworth Falls.

Dinner was in an Indian restaurant in Blackheath, the town where we’re staying. The food was yummy after a long day of hiking, but we weren’t so thrilled by pricing scheme. Rice to go with the meals was $3/person. I kept thinking about how many meals $15 of rice would actually make for us. There’s no tipping here, but we miss other things about the American restaurant ways. Tomorrow we’ll cook our own rice and skip the somosas.