Following the Dream

Christian November 4th, 2008

     Our plans for the weekend were set.  Janine was taking us to see the Blue Mountains outside of Sydney.  Our first stop was at a place called “Scenic World”.  The first thing we did here was take the world’s steepest incline railway down into the valley.  It was a bit cheesy, but good fun.  As the ride started, the Indiana Jones theme music started to play, making the Japanese tourists go crazy.  The ride was much steeper and shorter than we had thought.  It lasted about a minute and a half, but it was really steep, almost feeling like a roller coaster.  Once down in the valley, we started off on the walking trails through the forest.  It was nice and quiet, with the occasional yell from other tourists.  Then the rain started. 

At first, it was not hard and gave the forest a really good atmosphere.  Then as we made our way to the “rainforest hut”, the skies opened up and it began to pour sheets of rain down.  Luckily, we were in the hut when this happened.  After it started to slow a little bit, we decided to forge ahead in the rain on the trails.  It actually wasn’t that bad, seeing that the trees took the brunt of it.  A guy on the trail pointed out being able to see the waterfall through the trees at one point.  It was a nice walk through the forest.  To get back up to the top of the cliff, we took a cable car.  It was filled with tourists all trying to get to the best spot for photos.  It was a bit funny since the windows were all super foggy.  There were a couple of kids that were acting up the whole time.  At the top, when getting out onto the metal platforms one of them who was still acting up fell and bit it hard on the metal.  I laughed to myself, and kept walking.  Once through the tourist shop, we made it to the Skywalk.  It was a cable car that took you across the valley, with great views of the waterfall and the valley below.  Lucky us, the bad kids ended up in the same car as us.  Casey was asked to take a indian couple’s photo.  One photo turned into a complete photo session.  They kept changing places in the cable car, having Casey take a bunch of photos from all angles.  It was very comical.  This car was getting blown back and forth in the strong wind, with rain pouring into the one side.  When we reached the other side, the operator said that we could take the one path down for a really good view of the waterfall.  Seeing how it was raining and cold, the three of us opted to “save it for another time”.  The views from the car were pretty, even if the weather wasn’t on our side.  You caught good views of the waterfall below. 

Once back from the cable car ride, we decided that the restaurant on site was way to overpriced so we made our way into town for a bite to eat.  Of course when we left Scenic World, the rain had stopped and the sun was peeking through the clouds.  Janine drove us into Katomba to grab something to eat.  We stopped at a little bakery to try a traditional Aussie Meat Pie.  It basically is a mini pie crust filled with meat and gravy.  They typically are eaten with ketchup.  In Australia, they do not have normal ketchup packets.  Instead, they have little plastic containers that you squeeze the ends of to make the middle open and squirt ketcup.  Being new to this, my aim was off and it ketchup shot across the table, just missing Janine.  It was a close one.  After that one, I had the hang of them though.  The next stop on the list was Jenolian Caves.
     Jenolian Caves is one of the oldest cave systems open to the public in the world.  I slept through most of the ride there, but apparently it was a hair raising one.  The last stretch of road was a narrow winding road on the mountain side that in many spots could not fit two cars side by side.  I woke up to a car headed right at us, but then stopped to let us pass.  The entrance to Jenolian is pretty impressive.  The road leading to the main area of hotels is through a huge cave.  Once we parked, we checked into our room.  It was not bad for $20AUD a night.  Our first cave tour was in the cave called “The Temple of Baal”.  It was a bit of a walk from where the group met up at.  We walked up towards the middle of the mountain to a door.  They had blasted tunnels to make the tunnels more accessible to the public.  In order to preserve the cave, you have to walk through a series of heavy metal doors.  After the final door, we had to trek down a ton of stairs.  Our guide pointed out some very neat features of the first part of the cave.  The entire cave is wired with lighting that is used to “enhance” the presentation.  He would shut off most of the lights, except a few on the cave features that he was describing.  When we got to the main area of the cave the guide turned off all of the lights to show us a light show that had been set up.  It basically was lights shining on the inside of the cave’s vaulted room that looked like water.  There was instrumental music playing the whole time.  It was pretty cool to see.  Next, we moved onto a section of the cave in which it would have been discovered.  He shut off all of the lights and then another light show of what it would have been like to discover the cave back in the olden days was played.  This included the sounds of rocks being moved and voices of people exploring it.  It also demonstrated just how little light would have come from a candle.  It was pretty neat.  It was beautiful cave on the inside.  There was a shaw named the angel’s wing, due to its shape. 

It was pretty good, until we had to climb back up all of the stairs to get out.  We had some time to kill before our night time “Ghosts, Myths, and Legends” tour, so we grabbed some food.  We met up with the group at around 8PM.  You only got one headlamp for every two people, so you were expected to share.  Some of the people did not fully understand this, as each person in the couple were grabbing their own headlamp.  Luckily they had some spare hand flashlights to give out to those who did not get any lights.  We began the tour by walking up the hill to the entrance of the cave that we did earlier on in the day.  We were a bit disappointed since we had already seen this cave.  Along the way, the guide told us some stories of random mysterious things happening to the guides at different times in the caves.  Luckily they took us into the temple of Baal for only a small part of the tour.  We actually worked our way though the cave system, passing through 4 or 5 of the caves on offer.  Most of the stories were not all that believable, but it was still an adventure wandering through the caves in the pitch black.  He did tell us a funny story that goes something like this.  There was a new guide who had just started recently working at Jenolian.  One of the more experienced guides thought it would be a funny idea to sit in the dark in a corner of the cave and jump out and scare him.  As the guide was sitting in the pitch dark, he began to hear footsteps coming towards him.  This was not a rare event, someone separating from the group to take a momento from the cave.  He sat in the dark and the guy from the group stopped right in front of him, unaware of the older guide’s presence.  Then the guide felt something.  It was warm and wet.  The guy from the group had went away from the group to relieve himself in a dark corner of the cave.  Not wanting to say anything, the older guide sat there in the dark and took it.  He was full fledged peed on.  He did not tell anyone about this for a long time apparently.  That story was believable, except I know if I was going to scare someone from the dark and was starting to get pissed on, I would shout at the bloke (Australian for guy) to “piss off” quite literally.  Towards the end of the tour, the guide told us about a green light in the cave, moving freely about.  Almost like someone was carrying a candle with a green flame.  At first I thought he was joking, until people started to see it.  As I moved to the right, I could see this light moving about in the cave.  There was no way that a person could be holding it and moving it due to the steep grade of where the light was coming from.  Casey saw it as well.  It was pretty cool, even if somehow they manufactured it.  We continued to walk and hear stories of ghost sightings.  We passed an underground river which was pretty cool.  We exited the cave a far way from where we started.  It was pretty cool to realize that we traveled so far underground.  We headed to bed, all very tired to get ready for the next day.
    The next morning, we woke up early to do an early morning self guided tour of one of the caves.  It was a pretty cool cave as well.  It had a huge vaulted ceiling.  Taking the cave tour with an audio guide was nice.  You can go as fast or as slow as you want to.  Along the way, it was possible to see the old paths visitors used to use.  It looked a lot less safe then the metal walkways that are in use today.  After the final cave tour, we left Jenolian and made our way to the town of Blackheath.  We stopped for breakfast at a place.  I had a hot carmel drink, that would have been great if they would have remembered the caramel.  Instead, I had a cup of hot foathy milk.  The replacement that I had ordered never did arrive, but we were not charged so it was not a big deal.  We went bushwalking (Australian for hiking) for a little bit on a nice nature trail that led to a lookout.  When we made it to the lookout, we were greeted by a wall of white fog blocking any views that were there. 

Disappointed, we walked back another trail to the car.  The next stop was to the house of two of Janine’s friends for the afternoon and night.  They had a bunch of wild parrots that frequented their bird feeders that were interesting to watch.  They even have a wild bird that will eat out of your hand.  There was cheese, cabernet paste (amazing), and crackers for an appetizer.  The Australia Rugby League Championship was on, so that received full attention.  It was a good game, with team Manly creaming the Melbourne team, holding them at 0.  It was pretty neat to see Rugby league.  I had played Rugby union on and off a few years ago, so it was cool to compare the rules.  After the game we sat down to a terrific lamb dinner, with all of the wine we could handle.  After dinner, there was strawberries with cream in cointreau.  Then there was also port served.  By the end, I was very full.  They are very hospitable people.  It was a good night.  The next morning they even served us breakfast.  It was like we were at a five star resort.  Once we were done with breakfast, we headed to the Blackheath lookout again.  This time the fog was gone and the view was terrific.  Then we stopped at a second lookout that you could see the “three sisters” from.  This is a famous set of three rocks that look alike.  After taking in the views we made our way to a place that had good bushwalking.  Unfortunately, the cheater trail to the lookout was not open so we had to take the long trail.  It was not bad at first, but then as we were on it, it became muddier and steeper.  We made it to a lookout point that had a great view of the main waterfall.  Janine’s knee was acting up, so she told us to take the trail a bit further and go up to the waterfall, she was going to head back to the car.  We got pretty close and then within minutes the weather took a turn.  Dark clouds rolled in, the wind picked up, and the rain started.  Casey and I were not going to get stuck out on this trail in the middle of a terrible storm, so we walked with a little extra pep in our step on the way back.  We actually caught up with Janine about 45 minutes after we decided to head back.  By then, the skies cleared again and we were almost to the visitor center.  It was insane how fast the weather turned there.  We got into the car and headed back to Sydney.  The rest of the week was spent with me trying to keep ahead with work.  We made it down to Darling Harbor once, but besides that it was very “normal” with nothing exciting happening.

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