Blue Mountains... Take One (Jenolan Caves)

I know it's been a while since I last updated the site, so I figured I would go back to Easter Weekend and post some of our adventures! We had an amazing Long Easter Weekend where we stayed in Wentworth Falls (part of the Blue Mountains). We spent one day abseiling (repelling) down waterfalls and off of 30m cliffs and went canyoning and hiking. Keep your eyes peeled for a new posting of that adventure.

We also spent one day at the Jenlon Caves which are these HUGE, amazing caves that date back to the 1800's. They are the oldest discovered open caves in the world. We took a tour with about 40 people and walked through the caves and gave us some history on the different parts of the caves. There was one area of the caves where they actually hold some small concerts. The music must have sounded amazing.

Rather than listening to beautiful music bouncing off the chamber walls, we had the fortune of listening to children screaming and crying. There were a group of about 14 Americans (with their children) who had a little trouble actually controlling the kids!

Other than the screaming kids, the caves were absolutely spectacular. Hope you can get a little idea of what they were like from these pics!

Here is another link to our friends pics from the Blue Mountains. Click here

Blue Mountains...Take Two (Abseiling Adventure)

One of our friends in Sydney suggested that we do this day canyoning, abseiling, hiking trip in the Blue Mountains. He gave us the number for "High and Wild" Adventures. Chris was beside himself with joy for this venture and signed me, Laura and Scott up for a full day trip. (I have to admit I was pretty excited when I first saw information online about this trip).

Well, we get out to the Blue Mountains, and the weather is nothing but cold, wet, rain and fog... Which as you can imagine got us not so excited about our little day trip. Here's a little taste of the weather:

You've gotta love Chris' enthusiasm... Saturday morning at 8am we head to the High and Wild office to go get all of our gear. It was of course downpouring, but that did not take the smile off of Chris' face! (Neither did this picture)

We spent the morning learning basic skills of abseiling and nearly 2 hours later, we were heading down cliffs of 30m! Check us out!!!

After the above picture was taken I got a little nervouse about abseiling. However, in order to do the canyoning, you HAD to do the higher abseil because at the end of the canyoning, the only way to get out of the canyon was by abseiling down a waterfall.

So, after a nice hearty lunch we began the trek! We put our wetsuits on, got our backpacks ready and we were on our way. Unfortunately we do not have picture of this part of the trip yet since it was raining and didn't want to bring our digitals along. We did however purchase a waterproof camera, so I just need to wait for those pics to be ready. (Note: What I actually mean by that is I need to actually drop the cameras off to get the pics developed!)

The conyoning was absolutely amazing, so I do hope that the pictures came out. We basically went through this canyon with rocks, water, trees and natural waterslides and pools. We basically, swam, walked, jumped and slid through the canyon until we got to the big waterfall where we abseiled...

Not sure how many of you looked at the original video we put up, but if you notice, the water was barely trickling down the waterfall. That's not quite the case when it's been raining for days on end... Needless to say, we had water pouring down on us pretty heavily as we were hanging from ropes 30m in the air. It was not the most enjoyable experience of my life. Not sure if hiking up 1000 stairs after was more enjoyable though?

All in all it was a fantastic adventure. I will certainly be visiting the Blue Mountains again and may even subject myself to another High and Wild adventure!

Happy Easter from the Blue Mountains...

Not so Happy Easter for the Easter Bunny... Chocolate dipped strawberries. yum!