The mountains are blue when you can see them.

Our little group decided to make the 2 hour train ride North for a one night stay in a hostile in Katoomba, New South Whales. This is the main place to go if you want to experience the Blue Mountains I guess. Originally, we were all on the same page and ready to go. A huge group of us. Then somebody made the mistake of looking up the weather forecast. Leave it to those 'planners' to try and spoil a good idea with logical thinking. So somebody hopped on the extremely slow internet and brought up the bad news: Cloudy - Rainy - 14 degrees (Celsius mind you).

And with that the plague hit our group. "I don't know if I wanna go." "Eww it's gonna be raining?" "Well then I'm not going either."

Who would want to go view the mountains in the cold, cloudy rain? I guess that sort of makes sense. But I'm a pretty big fan of the outdoors and rain never hurt anyone (I realize that in no way is the second part of that statement true.) Anyways, I was completely willing to rough it and take a chance. So were 7 others so we had a decent group still and decided to go.

This trip would prove to be yet another packing disaster for me. Did you know that at backpacker hostiles they provide you with clean sheets and a pillow? The 7 others seemed to know that. Unfortunately that knowledge wasn't shared with a certain me. There I was on the morning of our trip, walking down the crowded sidewalks of Sydney with a pillow and my brand new blanket I'd purchased from Kmart (yes THE Kmart). I pretty much gave off a slumber party vibe.

In my other hand I proudly carried a 4,000lb. bag of beer. This, I thought, was brilliant. My thoughts to myself were something along these lines: "Why am I the only one who thought to bring beer? These people are idiots. I can't wait to say no when they beg me for a beer later." I was happy with the decision. Shockingly though, I wasn't praised for this clever idea. Instead, every time my bottles clanked together on the walk to the train station, I was deemed an alcoholic. And, of course, in the end it turned out bringing beer wasn't a good idea. There was a "Liquor Land" pretty much right next to the hostile which could have saved my arms a serious Worlds Strongest Man type workout.

The conditions when we got to the mountains: fog like I've never seen. We couldn't see six feet in front of us, never mind trying to see the spectacular mountain views that were looming well past any hope of site. And of course the weathermen were correct in their prediction of rain. I swear to you, this story takes a turn for the better in a bit. But we're not there yet, and all the negativity will make the upturn truly rewarding. Maybe.

Quick picture along our walk

An Aussie woman (i still don't know if calling her a Sheila is appropriate or if I'm cool enough yet) at the Katoomba train station was nice enough to give us this optimistic insight: "You guys picked the worst time to come here". Damn. Just like that she walked away, not even telling us where she got her chicken wrap which looked delicious.

We tried to think positively, but there was a 0% chance of seeing one mountain or staying dry. The weather was that bad. Luckily, I was smart in one aspect of my packing. I'd remembered to bring a poncho. And after we'd settled in at our hostile and walked for a few solid kilometers towards the town's tourist centre, I realized I left the poncho back in the room. I must have been too excited/dumb. It was too late. I had to live with my stupidity. I was already wet anyways so who cares? Nobody, so I'll move on.

What did we need to do in order to stay positive? Well, we certainly didn't need a reminder of how bad the weather was for this trip, but of course, we got one. An Asian couple (in ponchos of course) who were virtually sprinting in the opposite direction we were headed asked mid-stride if we were headed for the blue mountains. "Yeah" we said, hoping not to get laughed at. Then we got laughed at. They gave us what was clearly an empty "good luck" to accompany their chuckle and were on their way to shelter. At this point, we realized the inevitability of being showered by "I told you so" from those who remained in Sydney. We officially had the Blue Mountain blues. Check out the killer view we had when we finally got to the lookout. This spot is where you would normally see the famous Three Sisters rock formation. Enjoy the temporary glaucoma.

Here's a picture of Liz with the three sisters in the background. I don't really think that's true but who's going to know the difference?

It had actually stopped raining. That was a bit of good news. But still, the decision was to go to the info centre and find out what we could do the next day , weather permitting. Inside this nearly vacant tourist hideaway, it seemed people were more interested in shelter than information. Apparently there had been days where the mountains were visible and the people at the tourist centre were nice enough to print those out on little cards and offer them to us for a fee. It was an odd thing to me, but the three people that were in there were hunched around the postcard rack snapping away at them with their own cameras. I almost offered to throw down the $1.10 simply to avoid this embarrassing moment for humankind. But no, people need to have these memories on their own memory cards for proof that they truly were there.

Time for the miracle.
After about a half hour of looking at thimbles, shot glasses, t-shirts, and koozies, we left the shop. Someone yelled something like "I can see!" (no, they hadn't been cured of blindness) and pointed off towards the mountains. Holy God, there they were. It all makes sense. God had just been messing with us. At that moment, all seven of us began a sprint towards the lookout where we finally had a view. Moments like this are always funny to me because people immediately reach to the cameras rather than take it in with their own eyes. Which reminds me, here you go:

This last pic shows the real Three Sisters

Now we were in business. We completely changed the plan (which was to go back to the hostile and enjoy the benefits of my beer lugging labor). With the weather in our favor, we had to take advantage of it. We walked a three hour trail through the very mountains you're looking at in those photos. Part of this walk was a climb straight down the side of a cliff where the stairs were not exactly built at a friendly angle. I couldn't believe how awesome everything was now that I could see it. We decided that the mountains literally went on for days and actually did have to take moments to just stop and absorb everything and look out into the vast expanse. I swear those moments had nothing to do with our completely urgent need to catch our breath. But, the fact is that we were just about unable to breathe at times. Now I was feeling grateful for the semi cold temperature. Heat wouldn't have helped in the comfort department.

The trail was supposed to lead us to a waterfall. It was one of those things where we could hear the water falling very long before we ever saw it. We would walk walk walk walk and still nothing other than the soothing sound of the falling water in the distance. Or was that Chuck having a pee just off the trail? Either way, we knew there was a flowing liquid somewhere and we all hoped that meant the waterfall was coming. It was a constant tease in our ears until finally we did come up on it. The walk ended up being worth it because this really was a great looking fall. Once again I drained another couple of AA batteries as I formed a one man paparazzi on this thing. I later went through my photos and was stunned that anybody could take so many pictures of the same thing. There are only so many different angles to shoot from. I'll just show a few of them that I liked.

That waterfall reminded me of the word awesome. We were all still pretty tired. Not necessarily sore yet but many of us knew the soreness would follow. And even though I'm not in the states anymore, it does get dark as the evening approaches. This was important information to know as we considered how much longer the hike might take. Getting stuck out there in the dark wouldn't be a good end to the day, even with all the little flashlights that are attached to everyone's vodafone mobiles. So, we knew we had to keep plugging away at the steps. Its hard to complain about all the walking when you're in the Blue Mountains. There's always something to look at and I barely noticed I was doing anything physical now that the stairs were behind us. It didn't take a genius to figure out that we were going to have to climb up some stairs on the side of a cliff to get back up though. The way down was difficult because balancing was a task, the way up was difficult because our legs were starting to feel the effects of three hours of walking.

Me and Luke were the only ones who walked all the way back to the hostile after the hike. Everyone else hitchhiked and packed into some car that in no way was meant to have five people stuffed inside of it. The driver who picked them up beeped at me and Luke as he drove by and Chuck gave us a one fingered salute. Sweet. Even walking in the town of Katoomba isn't all that bad though. I find this to be a good time to post this picture of some random intersection there.

After a good night's sleep (drinking) at the hostile, we woke up, had Belgian waffles, and caught the train back. The trip was completely worth it.

It seemed like there were heaps of things to do at the Blue Mountains. There was this gondola ride and some crazy train that goes through the forest. I saw some ads for horseback riding that looked like a splendid time. Basically what I'm saying is I would definitely consider heading back there at some point during my stay. It was very easy/inexpensive to get/stay there. It took an act of God but when we got back to Sydney we were able to tell everybody else about the great time (and sore legs) that they missed. Go me!