Blaue Berge

During my time in Sydney, I took a day trip to the Blue Mountains. The Blue Mountains are a mountain range, with large parts of it being a UNESCO World Heritage site.

There is a direct train from Central Station in Sydney to the Blue Mountains. After about 2 hours of travel, we arrived in the town of Katoomba. It is a small sleepy town with about 8000 residents. This town is popular among tourists because it is a good starting point for hiking in the Blue Mountains. The famous Three Sisters (rock formations) are also located here. However, the flies in this town were torture. They would fly into your face and try to crawl into your mouth as soon as you opened it to eat or talk. Fortunately, the fly problem subsided once we started hiking. The mountain range is very large and extensive, so even with our 6-hour hike, we only saw a small part of the Blue Mountains. We desperately searched for large waterfalls where we could swim in a pool. It was very hot, and we could have really used some cooling off. Unfortunately, we only found small waterfalls, so we had to forgo a big refreshing swim.

After not doing any sports for weeks, the Blue Mountains were a real challenge for me. At first, it was more downhill than uphill, but eventually, that changed. In the mountains, there were only steep uphill stairs. I felt like I climbed thousands of steps. My legs were really sore for the next two days.

In general, the hike was very exciting. The trails were sometimes very overgrown, so I doubted if it was even a hiking trail. Plus, I was wearing shorts and was afraid that a spider would cling to me while I was bushwhacking. I constantly felt tickles and itches, and I jumped around like a pinball when I thought there was a bug sticking to me. And then there was the toilet problem. I hoped that at some point, a tourist information or something similar would appear where I could use a normal toilet. But nothing came up. Eventually, I couldn't stand it anymore, and I had to go into the undergrowth to relieve myself. I was afraid that a snake would come out from under the leaves I was standing on, so I changed my toilet spot. Eventually, I found large rocks to stand on, and I felt safe there.

During the hike, we encountered a large bird. We met an Australian hiker who told us that it was a Lyre Bird. The special thing about this bird is that it can mimic sounds of all kinds. Not only the singing of other birds, but also sounds of other animals, such as dogs barking and even human voices.