The “non-politically correct” tour

So, I left New Zealand on Friday – it’s amazing how quickly these last three weeks have gone by. Amazing. Anyway, since I left New Zealand on Friday, that means I arrived in Sydney, Australia on Friday. When I was first planning this trip, I was thinking, you know, that New Zealand and Australia were close to each other – like a 90-minute flight or something. Uh huh, right. Try 4+ hours. I’m not kidding.

Last week, as I was trying to figure out what to do while in Sydney, I found a “Top 10 things to do…” list online. One of the things mentioned was visiting the Blue Mountains. I thought about renting a car and driving out there (it’s about 2+ hours from Sydney), but never did get around to renting one. But then, when I checked into my hotel, right there at the reception desk was a list of things you could book through the hotel – one being a guided tour of the Blue Mountains, leaving directly from the hotel. OK, sign me up. We left at 7:30 Saturday morning and it was FANTASTIC! The guide was hilarious and informative – emphasis on hilarious. Well worth the money. I would recommend it to everyone. But, I digress. About 20 minutes into the tour Rob (aka Oi Boy, or tour guide) asked us (there were 10 of us total – 9 Canadians and me) whether we wanted the politically correct tour, or the non-politically correct tour. Which do you think we chose? I’ll give you a hint – did I mention that Rob was hilarious? We started at a Wildlife reserve where we got to pet Koala bears and Wombats (did you know that Wambats aren't bats?), pet and feed Kangaroos (or were they Wallabies – I can’t be sure), and see other native Australian wildlife. It was really cool. I even saw a dingo, but it did not eat my baby.

You can't really tell, but the kangaroo (wallaby?) is licking my arm - so cute

See the little joey?

We fed the kangaroos food in ice cream cones - those were edible, too

Again, you can't really tell, but the kangaroo is "holding" my hand with its paw - not wanting me to take the food away, I guess

After the Wildlife reserve we drove up into the Blue Mountains (named such because the evaporating oil from the eucalyptus trees gives off a blue hue). Gorgeous!! Of course Rob kept telling us that these mountains were nothing like the Canadian or Utah mountains we were used to, but he admonished us to never laugh about the size of a guys mountains, so I ooh’ed and ah’ed in all the right places. But really, it was gorgeous!

One thing about doing a tour like this by yourself is that, sometimes, other people in the tour take it upon themselves to “adopt” you. There were two couples from Alberta who adopted me. They were really cute. Everyone offered to take my picture for me, hike with me, etc. It was very nice of them.

We saw this kangaroo in the wild - no feeding or petting this one. I guess they can be pretty vicious.

The Three Sisters in the background

The Three Sisters

The tour took about 10.5 hours. After getting back to Sydney, I walked to Darling Harbour and had a delicious dinner at an Indian restaurant, Zaffron. Food is really expensive here, by the way. I bought a bottle of water and a snack bar to take on the tour with me for $7+ (I converted it to U.S. dollars, so, yes, that’s $7!).

A couple of random bits of knowledge I learned today from Rob (there were lots of them, but these two are most interesting):

1. It’s totally legal for bicyclists to ride on the freeways – wish that had been the case when I was on my mission in France…
2. The kangaroo and emu, of all the native Australian animals, appear on the Australian coat of arms because they are the only animals that cannot walk backwards, so the coat of arms signifies “always moving forward.”

I thought they were interesting bits, anyway…