Travel ... 3

Just been reading Vicks Nicks blog. Which includes this beautiful excerpt about the Blue Mountains.

Our 3 day walking trip to the Blue Mountains between Christmas and New Year continued the stamina testing as we took off around the rolling mountains of the incredible local scenery - the walking also helping with the fitness as we climbed over 1000 ft amongst the blue/green haze of the eucalyptus trees. Here I saw some of the most breathtaking scenery I have ever seen. We descended almost vertical rocky steps to the floor of the thick rain forrest below, the noise of birds and ciccadas almost deafening. The dense bright green canopy of the ferns and vegetation above was pierced by streams of dusty golden sunlight filtering through the leaves, the sound of rushing water close by from huge waterfalls emerging from high in the rocky canopy, tumbling over the rocks and throwing a spray of rainbow droplets above us.

Let me tell you about my experience of the Blue Mountains.

Get up stupid o clock Sydney time. Fight Tristan for the shower (not easy when he is in bleary early morning grizzly mode). Take a local bus at rush hour to get down town to Sydney Central, and find a train.
Discover at this point that the cash point won't give me any money. Why not? Because my bank finds Australia such an extraordinary place to go to that it has put a hold on all my cards. All of them. No switch, no visa, no mastercard. Running rapidly low on cash I smile at Nat in the hope she'll bail me out possibly indefinitely. Or at least until I can shout at some automated system running 12 hours behind.

So, ticket borrowed from Natalie's purse we take the 2 hour train out to the Blue Mountains. It comes to our attention at this point, that it is unquestionably raining. But not being faint hearted tourists, are we going to turn back. Never.

So we arrive at Katoomba. Described by the tourist website as charming, quaint, with points of cultural interest, it is clearly in fact, cheap, touristy, and overrun with souvenir shops. Anyway, I digress. We head immediately to the tourist information spot and tell the guy at the counter we want to go for a run. See I run Australia too. Enthusiastically he outlines a 10 k run, through the beautiful rain forest, taking in the sights etc. He then hands us a paper map. Did I mention it was raining?

Obviously I'm over prepared for rain, having been told that Australia at Christmas was likely to be cold, dreary, downpours of rains...

So I'm there in my running tights, tee-shirt and a woolly hoodie (and I don't mean snazzy merino woolly hoodie). I mean once dorothy perkins jumper. Hearing your man at the desk mumbling something quietly about leeches we set off. Jogging through the concrete town, towards the cliff face.

And we arrive at the start of the scenic part and we are definitely getting wet. Natalie (my erstwhile companion) is wearing a snazzy waterproof. I am considering jogging with my umbrella up. I reach this point later in the trip.

So the beginning of our run is in fact a metal stair case. Did I mention it was raining? So for metal stair case you can read neck breaking, ankle fracturing death trap. Running clearly not an option. So we walk, attempting to get down as quickly as possible, but in fact slipping and grabbing at handrails in a frantic manner.

As we get towards the bottom, I might add that I am not seeing "The dense bright green canopy of the ferns and vegetation above was pierced by streams of dusty golden sunlight filtering through the leaves" but I think it would be only fair to admit the "sound of rushing water close by from huge waterfalls emerging from high in the rocky canopy". Rushing water... you're not kidding. I'm worried we are going to be swept away and there is no sign of the rain letting up.

So cheerfully assuming we are now at the beginning of a beautiful 10k run through the floor of the forest we start off, and run probably all of about 2 k, before it is clear that what now faces us is another bloody metal stairway. At this one is directly vertical. Sod grabbing the handrails, I'm looking for the ropes and harness to get up the cliff face.

Scrabbling up the cliff face, we understood this is the section of the trip guaranteed to provide stunning views over the three sisters. Did we see it. Did we bollocks. Not a single sight to be seen, other than the increasingly bedraggled English tourists wearing clearly inappropriate wet weather gear trying to run up and down a mountain and not looking particularly cheerful about it.

As we stagger back towards town I am now so wet, there is no point holding an umbrella. And we decide heading home on the next available train is a good manoeuvre. At this point it becomes apparent that the man at the desk had in fact been mumbling about leeches. Now I'm not wild about girls being squeamish generally, I say get on with it, but there is a black slug like object fastened to my calf, getting bigger by the minute. And Natalie is struggling to get it off. Its attached at both ends. Double mouthed leeches. Only in Australia.

It becomes apparent as well, that it is not a socially appropriate to de-leech yourself on a public train. So we sit. With a definite tension, trying to figure out what number of leeches have wormed their way into our shoes. It does not look good, because there are four or five of them working their way out of our shoes and moving stealthily into the train carriage. Clearly this leaves us with two options. 1) responsibly announce to the passersby and fellow passengers that we are in fact carrying a blood sucking infestation, and it is on the move or 2) sit quietly, occasionally flicking leeches from ourselves down the carriage and planning our escape route... Hmmm.

Arriving back in Sydney we are still wet. Cold. Having our skin chewed by little blood suckers, and we now have to negotiate a train, and a bus before we get back to Tristan's house. Preferably arriving before he, or his lovely wife, get back from work and find us de-leeching in his bathroom. Its a close run thing. And he may have been confused finding the tub of kitchen salt in the bottom of his shower.

So, not quite the scenic charming rolling mountains scenes Miss Nicks appears to have enjoyed.
Ah well.