Freezing in the Blue Mountains, NSW: Aug 8-9

Brrr...it was around freezing at night and not much warmer during the day! We brought a couple of lightweight longsleeves with us, but they just didn't quite cut it. I was chilly, but basically okay so long as we were walking, but Charles was a bit frosty feeling. We did have a lovely hike along the outside of the gorges after chowing on some hot curry meat pies.

The famous site of the Blue Mountains area is the Three Sisters, which are three tall rock formations reaching high out of a gaping forested gorge. It was beautiful, though I think many of these really hyped up "must-sees" end up being a sidenote of most of our trips. Perhaps it is because of all the amazing sites we have seen at home like the Grand Canyon and Valley of Fire and Yosemite. We are just so darned spoiled! This particular area, aside from the rock formations, reminded me of the Catskills in New York. We decided to spend only one day here because we had a visa issue to attend to in Canberra and wanted to travel south to see some platypus first. We walked along the side of the gorge just outside of town and had some extraordinary encounters with what I think we called Crimson Rosella, which is a type of Parakeet. They were just hunting and pecking along on the trail and paid us no mind as we got closer and closer.



We also saw a bird that is rather common throughout Australia called a Galah - another parrot-type specie with grey wings and a pink body and head and a bit of white on its crown. So pretty.



The ever-present Sulphur-Crested Cockatoo was fun at first, then quickly became and obnoxious headache-endusing machine present throughout the country.



Hiking makes us happy.