Katoomba

Today we ventured out of Sydney suburbia and into the Blue mountains. We had booked a couple of nights in Katoomba in one of the hostels, and were looking forward to meeting a few people and seeing some of the scenery. It wasn’t so hot today, which was fine by me and there was even a few spots of rain on our drive through the mountains.

Katoomba is a small town up the mountains. It’s a pretty little place consisting of one main street and supermarket. There is also, strangely, an abundance of bookshops although Chris’s search for a used copy of ‘Lord of the Flies’ goes on.
Unfortunately, our opinion of our hostel dropped a mile when we were told that ’free internet’ actually meant 30mins free - not long enough for all our planned skyping activities or accomodation hunting. Our opinion dropped further when we realised there were no sinks in the toilets and the kitchen was a bit on the pungent side. - oh and the payphone didn’t work either. Other than that it was fine!

We had planned on going for a bit of stroll to a place called ‘Echo Point’ which apparently has amazing views out across the mountains, however it wasn’t long before the fog set in for the day (see photo below) and we thought there was no point, we were more likely to get lost than see anything.

Instead we walked around the town and managed to find a computer shop which did cheap internet so after a few emails we spent some time hunting for accomodation for when we go to the states. We have been finding it much more expensive than we expected here in Australia - food costs particularly are sky high, so we’re keen to try and find a cheap short term let in the US to try and re-coup a few costs. We also managed to suss out how to put photos on blogs. We hope you enjoyed yesterday’s selection.

Tomorrow we are going to do today’s Echo Point visit and then go on one of the walks around the national park. There are a few waterfalls which would be good to see too.

So, all in all, a fairly quiet day, although I’m not quite sure where the time has gone. The only other noteworthy things to mention were that we did our first core session on Australian soil and finally managed to cook a meal (only after washing all the pots and pans prior to cooking!). It was good to have a home made meal and, although the McDonalds in Australia are excellent, we are looking forward to eating well again now.