Today was our final hike on our Sydney trip. Many of the trails in the Blue Mountains have opened after the threat of bushfires has diminished.
We felt great after a day of rest. Today is a 13k (8 mile) hike. We are starting at Wentworth Falls and will be hiking up and down all day.
We left at 6:50 am for a 20 minute walk over to the Central Train station.
Here we met our guides Leah and Namrata. Manon will be meeting us at Wentworth Falls. 6 others were on the tour with us. A college professor for the University of Wisconsin (John), a financial analyst from Saudi Arabia, a couple from Shanghai (she grew up in Hong Kong and he grew up in Spain), a couple from California (she was an ER nurse and he was a Boeing mechanic).
The tour group was Emu Trekkers. The guides are all volunteers. The money we paid for the tour is all donated to charities.
The train ride was one hour and forty minutes long. The trains are old but well maintained. By Aussie standards they are ancient. By Amtrak standards they are practically brand new.
We arrived in Wentworth Falls. Nice little town with many businesses open if we needed supplies such as food and water. Here we met our guide Manon. The three guides were all in very good shape and about 30 yrs old. Leah like to mountain bike and Manon is an avid hiker. Namrata is here to “learn the tour guide” ropes.
The start of our trail.
Darwin was here in 1926 and observed many animal species not found in Europe.
Manon warned us before starting. Lot’s of very venomous snakes. One did cross our path about 100 yds into the trail. We stopped and watched it cross the trail. We then moved on.
The trail was a bit more crowded then I expected it to be. It is sunny and in the upper 80s here. Very humid, 90s predicted for the afternoon.
The trail was well maintained. The train ride already took us up about 2500 ft above where we started in Sydney. We would spend considerable time climbing up endless stairs.
The photos do not nearly capture the breath taking views. The video here does a little better job.
We stopped for lunch about halfway through the hike. Terri made some comments about how feminine all of the girls in Sydney look in their dresses. Leah looked surprised. John also commented on the same thing. We then started talking about weight and how heavy Americans are compared to the people we see on the streets of Sydney. Leah commented on how Sydney is made up of many cultures and had a difficult time understanding how overweight most Americans are. I laughed when John said he sent home pictures of people to his kids to show him how fit they were. Leah said that there were many examples of overweight people in Sydney. “No match for Americans”, we said.
John shared a time when he was in Amsterdam and decided to learn French. His French teacher taught English in an elementary school and asked him if he would like to visit the class and answer questions from her students. He agreed. He shared two questions asked by her students with us. “Are all Americans as dumb as they look?”, “Are all Americans Fat?” “Yes”, may have been his response.
The three of us laughed and agreed that people in the Midwest are especially overweight. Leah commented how an organization in Australia educates elementary school students about proper nutrition.
We hiked down to a waterfall.
This video shows some of the parts of the trail we walked on.
It was late afternoon and we hiked back to town. We decided the Pub was a more appropriate place than the coffee shop. We had a few drinks, said goodbye to Manon and boarded the train back to Sydney.
We decided to get something to eat after we got off the train and before we went to the apartment. Machiatto was a restaurant we had passed a few times on our way to Darling Harbour. They advertised “wood fired” pizza. We stopped in just in time as it was beginning to get very crowded. I don’t usually care for the California style, thin crust pizza but it was very good. Burned just enough to give it some flavor.
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