We got up early today and the weather was still looking pretty miserable. This was our only day to see the Blue Mountains, so we decided to head that way anyway and hope that the weather would be better than here. To get to the Blue Mountains, it's a 2 hour drive out of Sydney, so we set off on route to the mountains. I've been a bit disappointed with the weather in Australia, as the only good days we've had have been in Brisbane, and the day we went to the harbour bridge and opera house. I thought Australia would have much better than this, but it seems that the rain has followed us from Fiji. We've only got a few more days left, so I of hope the weather clears up a bit.

After driving for over 2 hours to get here, we pulled into Katoomba, Echo Point, and the weather was even worse than it was back in Sydney. The sky was dark, there was so much cloud around that visibility was really poor, and to top it off, it was pouring with rain. We sat in the car for a while debating what to do, as we can't really afford to spend the day here tomorrow as we're going to a wildlife park and then have to drive back to Sydney. So we decided to go to the information centre to check it was safe to do some walks while the weather was like this. They said it's fine to go, so we braved it and said as we've come all this way, we might as well just go and do some hiking. Not that we'll be able to even see the Blue Mountains!

This area is also an expensive parking zone, so we also found somewhere further out to park for free and left the car there for the day. I put my coat on for the first time in ages and we set off on a trek. The rain wasn't so bad now, just a fine mist. We had to walk further to the start of the trek, but we'd rather do that than pay for expensive parking. When we went into the information centre, they gave us a sheet containing all the popular walks and hikes around the area. They recommended doing the 3 sisters walk, and then this track follows on to another walk. All the treks are rated easy, medium and hard tracks. She said that the 3 sisters one is a very easy one and that it would only take half an hour. As we're going to be here for the day, we may as well do a longer walk, so we set off on a 2 and a half hour trek.

We walked out of the Echo Point car park and followed the track around. There were some view points to look out over, but all we could see was a white mist. This isn't quite how I imagined the Blue Mountains to be. I was slightly annoyed that we'd travelled all this way and can't actually see any of the Blue Mountains. Never mind, we're here now, so we'll carry on the hike. We came to a point further on that said we'd have to descend 900 steps or so, as i'm now a pro at walking the steps due to the Inca Trail, we started walking down these steep steps carved out of the mountains. After walking down about 100 steps, we came to another viewpoint, this time one of the 3 sisters came into view even if it was misty, you could still see that this was a tall, vertical cliff face. I'm sure the view on a clear day would be amazing. At least we're actually getting to see some of the mountain. The 3 sisters are suppose to be the most famous points of the Blue Mountains. There is a viewing platform so you can see all 3 of the sisters, but on a day like today, it wouldn't even be worth going up there. We carried on descending the steps until,we reached the bottom, then the path led us along under some of the cliffs of the mountains. We were walking along surrounded by the forrest, such a shame visibility was so poor. The good thing about walking down here under the canopy of the trees was that we weren't getting as wet, but I was already soaked through, so it didn't matter now.

This path led us past a waterfall, some cool cave formations made out of the rocks, more viewing platforms, and ultimately where we came down, we had to go back up. So we must have had to climb more and more stairs. I think i'm not as fit as I was in South America as I was finding it harder to climb the stairs. Perhaps it was because we've just been driving around in cars for nearly 2 months of our trip. So when we eventually got to the top, the path that we should have taken was closed, so there was a diversion in place. We got diverted out of the trail and onto the road. This was more miserable as we now had to walk back to the car in the pouring rain as it got worse while we were walking. We weren't the only mad ones doing the walk, as we came across plenty of other people doing it on a day like today too. The car wasn't as far as we thought it was luckily, as I was feeling like a drowned rat. We drove to a campsite near a park where they had a shelter, a bit like a hobbit hole! At least it was shelter from the rain to cook up our dinner for the night. My legs were starting to really ache now and I was feeling really cold, I would love to be staying some place in the warm, as for Australia, it's pretty cold tonight at 13 degrees. I enjoyed our walk around the Blue Mountains, it would have been more pleasurable if we had actually been able to see if they were really giving off a blue hue though...