Sydney is a modern city with busy people that every once in a while want to escape their busy lives. Whenever this is the case, they go into the Blue Mountains. Some say to relax, I say because of the eucalyptus fumes that also get the koalas high…

In case you don’t want to read the whole post, watch this compilation:

From Sydney central station departs a special “mountain rail” that goes off into the woods every hour and only costs about € 4,00 (for a two hour trip). Easy peasy we thought! Especially because our B&B was within walking distance of the Katoomba railway station – or at least it was supposed to. With two trunks, a trolly, two backpacks and a handbag the Belgravia Guesthouse was just barely within that promised walking distance… But, we made it and no worries about our way back: there is a bus stop almost directly in front of the guesthouse.

We are staying for three nights at the Belgravia Guesthouse, which is located in Katoomba, the tourist hot spot within this national park. Highlights around here include:

The rock formation The Three Sisters

The Eucalyptus forest (apparently koalas do not get high on eucalyptus, they just sleep for 22 hours a day)

Our first Australian wildlife – also know as the short-beaked echidna

This trip was also the first great opportunity to try out our new toy: the GoPro camera! It is small, makes movies and you can easily hold it for great selfies like this:

Wear it on your head, like this:

Or around your chest (vastgemaakt met een heus tuigje!) like this:

The point is, you can make awesome (in my humble opinion anyways) films with it! The camera can even be voice activated, so whenever you are walking around and see something interesting you call out the magic words “GoPro start recording” and *bleep* goes the GoPro and starts recording.

For the past three days, we hiked – or “bushwalked” as the locals call it. We walked for several hours day, made possible by the lunches we packed in our brand new 20l cooling backpack. Some of the trails we bushwalked involved giant stairs (yes, we were actually smart enough to take them down):

Others waterfalls:

And one trail even involved dinosaurs. I told you, them Australians looove those dinosaurs! Just like in Taronga zoo, there were dinosaurs all over the place at Katoomba Scenic World. This time even including dinosaur eggs and a research team. Can’t imagine what the sales revenues for the Jurassic Park movies must be over here…

But no matter where we went there were small, funny, noisy and curious white cockatoos everywhere!