Australia Days 8, 9 & 10 (Katoomba/Sydney)

 Though we hated to leave our warm, cozy cottage with its fireplace, electric blankets and spa like shower...it was time to explore a little more of Katoomba. We got up bright and early and headed over to Scenic World, which offers a one-day pass allowing you unlimited rides down into the base of the mountains, where you can explore the forest, waterfall, fauna and an old coal mine below...all connected via a boardwalk. It sounded a bit suspiciously cheesy/touristy to me (and to an extent, it was), but the rides were all phenomenal, uniquely different experiences overlooking a very picturesque area. My mom was worried about getting motion sickness, Rich needed to set up shop in the cafe to access the wifi and map out the rest of our day, so I volunteered to be the chief photographer so I could capture my dad and Ryan having fun together.

First up? The steepest train incline in the world at 52 degrees! Obviously not with the original train cars (for coal mining), but still extremely steep.

I asked my dad to pretend to be hysterical with fear at the moment of descent. He did very well. Ryan tried valiantly to pull his jacket lapels and demanded that he keep it together. :-)

The view from Scenic World and all three rides included the Blue Mountains and the Three Sisters

Next up? The tramway that goes down, down, down to the base of the mountain as well...

This is the view of them descending from a great distance away...kinda creepy.

And last but not least...the skyway tram...this one did not go down, but across over Katoomba Falls.

There they go!

The Katoomba Falls were more like a Katoomba Trickle of Water

Floating mid-air...pretty darn cool.

After the excitement of Scenic World, we still wanted to hike down to Katoomba Trickle. It was very, very anticlimactic, but finding this van in the parking lot upon on return made things much, much better.

From the falls, we drove down to Featherdale Wildlife Sanctuary to check out the kangaroos and koalas. Though there are a variety of options to see them at zoos/private parks/etc, we picked Featherdale partly because its a sanctuary, partly because its a bit outside of the city/crowds and seemed less commercialized than the ones in Sydney. A friend also recommended it to us and boy were we ever glad we went there. It was mind blowing and a definite highlight of our travels to be able to hand feed a kangaroo for the first time and cuddle a koala (carrying one in New South Wales is illegal, which we can understand and support).

He's not feeding the mama and her joey (can you see her peeking out) an ice cream cone. ;-) Silly. That's not very appropriate. (He's feeding them a cone filled with jellybeans!) Just kidding, the cones were filled with dried grasses.

That's my arm feeding two little 'roos while their baby watches.

At times we would get mobbed by 'roos hungry to eat. I think we bought about 4-5 cones in 15 minutes.

This is the 'roo my brother Joey was named after...cause he's being lazy and yet, still finding the strength to eat. :-)

Being happily mobbed in the back of the park where these 'roos are less seen/fed.

Another highlight was getting to pet a few koalas...who couldn't care less about the people. All they seemed to care about getting a replenished supply of fresh eucalyptus.

This frightening large bird appears to be part ostrich, part turkey, part dinosaur. Which is a nice way of saying- she is uuuugly. And for whatever reason, these birds were all over the park. I shrieked inside every time I saw one.

I think he was more determined to hold this owlish-looking bird than any other animal in the park.

This large lizard wasn't his first pick to hold, but he scored in that the lizard had pooped a second before on the person before him. ;-)

Sup?

That dangling foot kills me.

This little guy (wallaby I think?) looks depressed.

On our last day in Sydney I didn't take any pictures because we spent the day just revisiting some of our favorite shops/restaurants. We stayed at the Courtyard by Marriott in North Ryde that night and because our shoes got dusty that day, my mom kept trying to wipe everyone's shoes off. I wouldn't let her do mine, but Rich let her. Which looked wonderful...the little old Asian lady cleaning the white man's shoes by hand. Disgusting! So I snapped a pic of the abuse. (JK. Well, not really. It did happen as described, I just asked Rich to fake yell at her for not doing it good enough...only it appears Ryan wasn't in on the joke for a second!)

We scored an extra seat on our flight on the way home so someone got to stretch out. He slept 8.5 of the 9.5 hour flight (a red-eye) home. The prefect traveler!

Then hopped into the car when Uncle Joey came to pick us up and crashed again. ;-) 

All in all..despite the rocky start- this was a great trip and one for the books. We got to see our dear friends, feed kangaroos and cuddle with koalas. Can't complain! :-) But you're not off the hook yet, I'm sure I'll post my usual trip out takes tomorrow!