Blue Mountains

So my Good Friday was spent "bush walking" (hah!) in the Blue Mountains. I did walk, and it was nice, but it wasn't what I'd call bush walking with the road pretty handy most of the time! I've been spoiled in NZ's isolation I think.

To start off with it was pretty quiet, apart from two groups of Japanese tourists shouting (really, shouting, quite unnecessarily). However as the day went on and I walked towards the must-see sights it got busier and busier. Hordes of Asian tourists - Chinese and Japanese as well as Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi - many dressed entirely inappropriately for a walk on anything except a high street. I saw dresses, handbags, and every sort of footwear including flip flops, ballet shoes, suede boots - but very few decent trainers or walking boots. The Europeans and Aussies were marginally better-equipped. I think the source of the problem was two-fold; one, the visitor's centre at Echo Point where there's a nice lookout, and two, "Scenicworld". Scenicworld (who named it, they need shooting?) has a cable car, a funicular railway, and a sort of horizontal cable car, and attracts loads of people. At the bottom of the cable car and the railway there's a boardwalk around what used to be the Katoomba coal mine, which was interesting, but, again busy.

So I walked most of the day, to see some waterfalls and the Three Sisters (rock formations) and down the Giant Staircase (878 steps, I wasn't walking up it!). Got the funicular railway up to the top of the cliff. It's the world's steepest and I thought it might be fun, which it was, though I didn't feel the need to scream as some other passengers did. Took a couple of pictures of other people for them and got generally irritated at having to avoid people taking pictures of themselves/girlfriends/boyfriends/friends/family in front of perfectly good views. The most random shot of the day was that of a Chinese lady who had asked me and an Aussie couple (who'd just climbed up a long flight of steps and were knackered) for help. She wanted a picture of herself and the Aussies in front of a sign. Nothing special about the sign ... I duly obliged, though I was as puzzled as the Aussies!

It was actually a pretty nice day, but would have been nicer with fewer people around.

Uploading to Flickr is ridiculously slow. I'm persevering, but I think it's unlikely I'll get anything from Brisbane or here up before I get back to Auckland.