April 26th-28th
We had decided ahead of time to drive overnight to Sydney so that we would have more time to spend exploring during the day instead of driving. Amanda and Sarah took the first shift while Kathleen and I snoozed in the back, cuddled up with the backpacks. Around midnight we pulled off into a Macca’s (of course) for some coffee and a driver switch. Kathleen and I hopped into the front seats and I turned the car on, greeted by intense rap music from the speakers (apparently Amanda and Sarah had the choice of either this or classical love songs to keep them awake). This, combined with our recently purchased coffees and the late hour, completely cracked us up and we started the second shift with some slightly manic laughter as we made our way back on the highway. Driving was surprisingly easy; I must have gotten the perfect amount of sleep to complete a couple cycles which, combined with the caffeine and Kathleen’s chatter from the passenger side kept me awake and on the lookout for ‘roos until we rolled into the outskirts of Sydney a little after 3:30am. Since we didn’t know where our hostel was and wouldn’t be able to check in until 10am anyway we pulled off onto a side street in a nicer looking neighbourhood, got as comfortable as we could, and attempted with varying degrees of success to sleep until around 7.
Surprisingly enough, squishing 4 people and all of their luggage into one very small car is not the most conducive to a good night’s sleep so we called it quits, defogged the window, and attempted to determine from our Googled directions and Lonely Planet map just where we were and how to get to Bondi Beach where our hostel and hopefully some hot food could be found. I was still in the driver’s seat and so was the lucky first to experience Sydney’s confusing myriad of streets and Google’s utter lack of help in telling us to “continue on” to numerous roads which we began to think didn’t actually exist, added with the complications of bridges vs. tunnels, toll ways, and general lack of directional sense. After what seemed like ages and an extensive, unplanned tour of Sydney we managed to take the proper one-way street and only drove a wee way past our hostel before realising that we’d finally made it and finding a 2 hour parking spot. After some minor squabbling about the payment for the room (which had already been made, she just didn’t realise it), the woman at reception agreed to let us check in early, thank goodness! I think it was probably our smell and tired looks of desperation which did it, she was probably just eager to get us out of the hallway before we scared away any other guests!
Our two options seemed to be either passing out on the very comfortable looking beds and sleep away the better part of the morning or get some good food in us that did not involve peanut butter or jelly and power through our tiredness. Keeping in mind that we only had about a day and a half in the Bondi/Sydney area, we opted for food and wandered down the street and around the corner where Gabby, a middle-aged Greek woman, had little trouble reeling us into her cafe for the breakfast special. My eggs, toast, and “streaky bacon” began to revive me but unfortunately Amanda, who had been feeling slightly sick in the car all night/morning barely made it out of the restaurant and back around the corner before she threw up her muesli and yoghurt all over the sidewalk L Thank goodness the street was not very crowded and we were able to get her back to the hostel without any more unplanned stops, but it was definitely not how she had planned to begin her morning. While she rested, Sarah, Kathleen, and I set out to explore the area and wandered around the various surf shops, an indigenous art gallery, and scoped out the best looking cafes for lunch the next day. The weather was a bit too cloudy and cold to hang out on the beach, but it was nice to just walk around after being confined in the Yaris for so long.
Around noon, we all met back at the hostel to find Amanda feeling a little better, at least well enough to go hang out with some koalas and kangaroos at a wildlife sanctuary. She was a trooper about the whole thing, not letting illness get in the way of experiencing Australia! Good on her, as they say J The wildlife park turned out to be sadder than we’d anticipated. It was rather small and run-down looking, which wasn’t helped by the dreary day outside. There were different pens for the wallabies, wombats, dingoes, and various native birds, which all looked like they were being confined in much too small of a space. In the middle of the park there was a small stand of trees which housed around 15 sleeping koalas, one of whom had been taken down by a worker to get his picture taken with all of the park’s visitors. He looked just like a stuffed animal with his dark eyes and big black nose; we all wanted to scoop him up and take him with us to a better home in the wild. 
Next, we went to visit the kangaroos, some of whom were free to roam around a fenced in area. This is Australia’s version of a petting zoo apparently, with kangaroos that eat alfalfa out of your hands instead of the U.S. version with goats that will eat not only the designated food but anything and everything else they can sink their teeth into. An Asian family had bought food for the animals but didn’t end up wanting it all so they gave us a couple of half-full bags and we had fun making friends with the wee hoppers who were already quite full but obligingly stuck their noses in our palms to see if we were offering anything new or exciting.
Our favourite was one of the bigger guys who had one very floppy ear and one which stood straight up, giving him a permanent look of curiosity as he tilted his head to the side to check us out. A penguin show was advertised for quarter-past, but when we found the location it was only a small cement pool with a few bushes around it and wee wooden shelters for the group of blue penguins who lived there. After seeing penguins in the wild in New Zealand, this also made us really sad to see them so confined and with no ocean to swim in, just a concrete pool. It didn’t appear that anyone was going to come for a demonstration or to give more information about the penguins so, after watching them waddle around their enclosure for a little while we decided that we’d had enough of the park, passed on our remaining food to another couple and their children, and climbed back into Yarrie, who felt wonderfully spacious without all of our gear.
On our way back to Bondi, we decided that we may as well stop by the Opera House and Harbour Bridge while we were driving that way since we didn’t know what the next day would bring and we would be there right as the sun was beginning to set, making for some awesome pictures. Only a few wrong turns later, we managed to find a parking spot and made the short walk down to the harbour to join all of the other tourists taking the requisite pictures in front of the bridge and the Opera House. It was beautiful as the sun was going down, making the clouds behind the bridge look bright orange and purple and forming a rainbow right over the Opera House. There was some fancy show going on that night and we felt slightly out of place in our rain jackets so we wandered around to the back where it was less crowded and discussed the fact that it would be one of the most epic first dates ever if you got to have dinner in the fancy restaurant and see a production at the infamous Sydney Opera House; that would be hard to top! In the midst of our photo session on the steps it started to rain on us, which was our cue to bail out and head back to the warmth and shelter of the hostel.
Little did we know that awaiting us in our room was one of the biggest spiders I have seen in real life! It was a great grey hairy thing which looked ready to pounce at any moment and was sitting boldly on the shoulder of Amanda’s jacket! I noticed it first when Sarah picked up the jacket and quickly pointed out the beast, causing Sarah to scream and throw the jacket towards the unfortunately placed Amanda in the corner, who also screamed, which led me to yell as spider and jacket landed on the floor at my feet. Kathleen came hurrying back into the room, wondering who was being murdered and added to the noise when she saw what she later described as the “pancake-sized” spider staring up at us all, daring someone to challenge it. Sarah was the bravest of us, taking up her shoe to conquer the beast while I stood by, ready to back her up with a can of pasta sauce as my weapon while Amanda and Kathleen huddled in their respective corners. We warned her that this might be a onetime shot, as the spider looked like it probably had some serious jumping capabilities in its long, hairy legs so she crept up on it with care and...whack! gave it a good, swift hit with the bottom of her shoe as we all shrieked like little girls and encouraged at least one more hit for good measure. Success! I grabbed some toilet paper from the bathroom to wipe the spider guts off our floor and we then commenced to thoroughly scour the room for any vindictive relatives who might be lurking, waiting to take revenge on us. Much to our relief, we didn’t find any other creatures and made our way down to the basement to make some pasta, which was quite the step up from our dinners of the past few days and tasted especially delicious eaten with my spork out of my collapsible camping cup.
After dinner, we were all fading fast and decided to take a short nap before going to check out the night life and celebrate Sarah’s birthday which had been a couple of weeks earlier but had never gotten a proper celebration. This nap turned into a rather deep sleep though, and we all slept through my alarm and woke up independently and very confused at various hours of the morning to find that we had, in fact, not made it out at all but were not very disappointed by this fact. Sleep seemed like a much better and more welcome option and we finally woke up the next morning feeling much more refreshed and not at all upset that we’d gotten a few more hours of sleep than we’d planned.
The next morning we had plans to meet one of our friends from Uni who was travelling through Sydney and wanted to visit Bondi Beach before continuing north. This was made a wee difficult by the fact that he’d lost his phone, which we didn’t know until we met him, but we waited at our hostel, hoped for the best, and were pleased to see him walking down the street only a few minutes later than planned. Tim had apparently been planning on meeting up with a couple of other groups of friends along the way but, due to loss of phone and lack of other means of communication we were the first that he’d actually made contact with. None of us had been down to the famous beach yet so we spent some quality time jumping the waves and looking at the wee blue jellyfish that were washed up all along the shore. It was a grand time until Sarah let out a yelp and came back up on shore; she’d been stung by one of the jellyfish! Fortunately, it didn’t look too bad and had mostly just scared her when she felt something wrap around her ankle, yikes! After that we decided that we’d had about enough of the beach and dropped Tim off at the bus stop, saying good-bye and wishing him luck with meeting his friends on the Gold Coast.
By this time we were getting rather hungry and our thorough investigations and keen noses led us to a small Thai place that looked delicious and didn’t appear to cost an arm and a leg. Perfect! I’d never had Thai food before but this “ThainaBox” (Thai in a box, clever, eh?) made it relatively easy for beginners like myself. We got to choose our type of noodle or rice, sauce, herbs, nuts, and meat or vegetarian option and then they made it all up right there! Of course, everything sounded delicious, but I finally settled on wheat noodles with Thai stir fry, garlic and sweet basil, cashews, and veggies. So far, this has been one of the most delicious meals that I’ve eaten in my time spent on the Pacific Rim. It helped that it was nice and hot on a rather drizzly day, but even the leftovers which I ate at a gas station for dinner the next night were delicious, and that’s saying something!
After our scrumptious lunch, we braved the Sydney streets again to head to the mall for some retail therapy. The mall which we found was very high end and most things were a far step out of our price range. However, all the expensive shops were made up for by the Target (YAY!! Home of great “Mum’s Day” cards and enormous bags of gummy dinos), Lulu Lemon’s (still expensive, but the workplace of one of our flatmates so we had to get a picture for her), and best of all a Borders which housed a Gloria Jean’s coffee shop! In Brisbane, Blake had told us about a drink which combined Amanda and my two greatest loves: TimTams and coffee, sold only at Gloria Jean’s. We’d been on the hunt for this elusive shop ever since and it’s possible that we got a little too excited when we finally reached the end of our quest. Added bonus on top of the absolutely delicious TimTam Chiller (think chocolate frappuchino with cookies blended in)? Free wifi! This was utilised to get directions to the Blue Mountains and not long after we were again on our way.Not surprisingly, we managed to get ourselves good and lost trying to escape from the maze that Sydney likes to call its toll-way system. Since we’d already seen most of these streets before (on accident), we were slightly less delayed than we had been on every other navigation. By the time we reached the town outside of the Blue Mountains National Park it was a little after 7, at which time everything starts shutting down, apparently. This made it very difficult to find anything for dinner and, after being turned away from three different restaurants, we settled on gelato, complete with mix-ins, before beginning our search for a hostel. Unluckily, our first choice closed their reception at 7:30 (I swear, it was probably 7:32...) but we stumbled upon another one that turned out to be very nice and had a palace of a room for us to stay in. I’ve been in hostels that could have fit three 8-bed dorm rooms inside of this one 10-bed room. There was only one other guy, from the U.K., staying in the room with us and it was hilarious trying to talk to him. He had a bit of a cockney accent and I’ve never known so many language barriers when everyone is speaking the same language! He did understand, however, when we started getting ready for bed around 9 that we were not going to be very much fun or go out with him and quickly gave up on us as lost causes. I’d like to see him camp and drive and explore on minimal sleep and then pass up the chance to sleep in a comfortable bed before hiking the next day!
It was raining the next morning when we got up, but we weren’t going to let that stop us from hiking in the Blue Mountains since we’d heard that they were beautiful and we’d come all that way to see them. We were surprised to find that, unlike what we’d been experiencing in New Zealand, this national park was much more of a tourist attraction, complete with a couple gift shops, guided walks, and boardwalk paths on parts of the trails. The map we picked up told us that there was a walk which was 3 hours return and would take us down into the valley, past the most notable waterfalls, and along the sides of the Three Sisters rock formations. This was all well and good, except for the fact that everything was so shrouded in mist that we could barely see the falls and the only way we knew we were above a valley was the fact that we had to walk down 1,000 steps to get to the floor below. Even though it was misty and muddy, it was nice to be able to stretch our legs a bit and get back out into (colonised) nature and away from the hustle of the cities.
Our final stretch was up the aptly named “Giant Staircase” which came with a warning of “very steep - strong walkers only.” Bring it on. Approximately 900 steps up the side of what we could only assume to be one of the Three Sisters later, we finally reached the top and were able to see through a crack in the clouds into part of the valley below. It was easy to tell how beautiful the views would have been on a clear day but, alas, we settled for our close up of one of the sisters. *Side note: we’re still not sure if it actually was one of the Three Sisters that we were looking at, but it was a large rock formation and we couldn’t see anything else through the mist so we decided that it must be in order to make ourselves feel better about or slightly disappointing hike. A short walk/run through the rain back to the car park and we were ready to set out to Mt. Kosciusko National Park with hopes of finding free camping for the night and better weather for our hike the next day. All fingers crossed!
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