Check that off the List

Thursday 9am

My journey starts with an early morning bus to the robina rail station. It continues with an over priced train ride to the brisbane airport, and by over priced I mean 22 dollars each way. I'm not going to negative town I swear, but that was pretty frustrating. The train to the airport went smoothly, and Evan, Jaime, and myself skipped right through security. Security is pretty lax for domestic travel in Oz because no one wants to blow up any of their stuff. People just like it here so you don't have to take off your shoes, and thing of cologne doesn't warrant a call to the pentagon. Kinda like the old days...Next we jumped on our Virgin Airlines 737-800 for Sydney. I'm pretty sure the flight set the record for infants on a flight. One in front of my cried the whole way, and one behind me laughed the duration. I thought I was losing my mind a few times. The flight was pretty quick, an hour give or take a few minutes, and we arrived in Sydney without much drama. Queensland doesn't believe in day light savings time which means you are in Sydney (New South Wales) at the same local time as you took off. Sydney Airport was another breeze, and we were off the tarmac and into our shuttle within 10 minutes. The shuttle to the mighty hostel. Our fellow backpackers in the shuttle including some haggard kiwis and unamused Frenchies. Anyway, we arrive at our hostel to find that the place smells like a refugee camp, and is completely decked out in halloween decorations. Oh, did I mention that it was in Chinatown. The place reminded me of an orphanage except instead of kids looking for homes it was europeans looking for meaning and narcotics. The smallest room they had was for four people; Adam the Pole enter from stage left. Yes we had to share a small room with two bunks and nothing else with a Polish kid. Thankfully he didn't want to cut us up into little pieces and eat us. Question time, you are in a hostel on vacation-whats the first thing you do? Answer-You get the heck out of there! We walked from our hotel through some sections of historic Sydney to Circular Quay and Sydney Harbor. Sydney is an awesome city with a great blend of modern and historic architecture. I really enjoyed hiking it to the harbor where we caught a glimpse of the famous harbor bridge and opera house. Both are pretty sweet, and I was happy to cross them off my life to-do list. After taking a butt load of photos; we visited the Rocks which is the first area of Sydney that was built for the KonVicts back in the day. Then we kept going around the perimeter of the city to Darling Harbor. Darling is full of restaurants, clubs, tourist crap, boats, crazy fountains, Olympic tributes, and other junk. It was really cool because the sun had just gone down, and we got a great view of Sydney at night. The end of the day signaled a return to the hostel and checking out some street musicians. Once back at the Hostel we decided to hit the TV room to mingle with our fellow people. I just wanted to befriend people so just in case they decided to go on a spree they would spare me. One girl from Northern Ireland had us cracking up because she was obsessed with America. After a few minutes I discovered that she based everything she knew about America from CSI, Cold Case, and Law and Order. Thats like me saying I love mexico because I watch Sabado Gigante on Univision. Bedtime followed. Ashley arrived in Sydney the next morning; we met up with her at the hostel and headed back to Circular Quay to catch a ferry to manly beach. I would like to say I'd never been so happy to be alive after a nights sleep in my life. The ferry to Manly was about 30 minutes, but we worth it. I got all kinds of great pictures, and the town of Manly was really cool. The was awesome as well, we pretty much spent the day hanging out on the beach and relaxing. We headed back into town around 5pm to meet Cody at Sydney Central Station so we could catch our 7pm train to the mountain town of Katoomba. Traveling with 3 women is absolutely horrendous, yea I said it, half kidding, but I said it nonetheless. Needless to say I was pretty excited to see Cody at the station, and discuss man stuff on the two hour ride through the darkness. We arrived in Katoomba around 9ish, then we checked into our second hostel. This place was way better-we had our own room with a TV and it wasn't in Chi-Town. We decided to pack it in early because we had to get up early for our day of canyoning and abseiling. Saturday morning comes and we are off to the River Deep Mountain High tour office which is a short walk from our Hostel. We arrive to find that our guide is a crazy ginger named corky who could have possibly been the weirdest person in all of OZ. We packed up our bags with rope, helmets, harnesses, and other crap and head into the Blue Mountains. Are morning session was an intro to abseiling where we repelled down 5, 10, and 30 meter cliffs. The cliffs looked out over the famed three sisters rock formation which was awesome. Definitely one of the most picturesque places I've ever been, and the abseiling was awesome. A few hours of abseiling was followed by lunch...the only complete meal I ate the whole trip. Yea I made it through the whole trip on a food budget of less than 3 dollars a day. No lie...I still have no clue how I made it. After lunch we hopped in our suspect van, and drove to another section of the Blue Mountains. We also picked up mountain woman extraordinaire Roberta to assist with our afternoon activities. Saying she was a burly mountain woman would be an understatement. Yea...moving on. We descended into the canyon after about a 30 minute hike. Canyoning is by far the coolest thing I've ever done in my entire life. It is absolutely awesome. Pretty much you slap on a wet suit and helmet; put all your other gear in a dry bag and go through a ridiculous canyon filled with rock jumps, huge boulders, and the most freezing/refreshing water I've ever touched. The trek through the canyon lasts about an hour and concludes with a 115 foot abseil down a waterfall. This waterfall wasn't a joke either-water absolutely pours down the face of it, and you have to repel down it. It was crazy to say the least. Getting down was a bit of a challenge especially when your crack head leprechaun guide gives you zero instructions. Pretty awesome. If you have some time youtube- empress falls blue mountain abseil. You can see videos of professionals going down. They make it look pretty easy, but I can tell you from experience that making it down alive is a victory. We then trekked up the mountain to the van, and headed back to the hostel where we just hung out the rest of night because we were all exhausted from our day. In the morning we took the train back to Sydney central around 10ish. We trolled around Sydney for a while, and ended up in a park playing cards. Subsequently, there was a vegan festival in the park so naturally I started craving steak. Vegans are strange bunch people...Time crawled by, but finally it was time to head back to the airport. A flight, another expensive train ride, and bus got us back to bond. Whoa what a weekend. Night. Later