A-camping we will go

Wow, what a busy couple of weeks it has been.

I left Sydney in a flurry of activity a week ago, working almost every day the week before I left. I only finished my last shift on May 1 a couple of hours before jumping on a train to the Blue Mountains.

Faithful readers among you will recall that I've already been to the Blue Mountains back in March but I decided to go again with my new travelling buddy Matt who ended up in the same dorm as me for a few days back in Sydney. Matt has a tent and really wanted to camp in the mountains for a night or two before heading back north and he asked me to join in. Why not? Travelling is all about going with the flow, or so I'm learning.

It was a different experience this time around out in the wild. We got to Katoomba about 8 p.m. so decided just to check into a hostel for the night as it was likely not too brilliant to try pitching a tent in the dark. We settled on a hostel near the train station. My guess is they don't do much business there in these months. The woman at the front desk seemed literally surprised to see us. Oh, and she put is in a 12-bed dorm out back behind the main building. Matt and I were amused to find out we were the only guys staying in the room when we opened the door. We laughed and began to think of it as "the servants' quarters." The foam mattresses on the beds were only about 2 inches thick so we weren't too far off in our estimation of the place. Thank God we were able to stack two mattresses together from the empty beds.

Early on the next morning we got up, showered, ate our breakfast of leftover pizza and headed for the grocery store. I guess we'd become a bit too accustomed to leisurely mornings in Sydney as by the time we were actually ready to start our hike it was almost 11 a.m. Would we make it to Mount Solitary, our destination, by nightfall? Gulp.

We made it, but not without a pretty massive amount of effort. About four hours later we found ourselves on the mountain but nowhere near a good campsite. Let's just say the Blue Mountains are a very rocky place. After climbing nearly straight upwards over rocks and with heavy packs attached to our backs we decided to head back down for some level ground.

It was a good call. A perfect campsite was waiting for us where we quickly set up the tent and got all organized before the sun went down. We scavenged for twigs, bark, and sticks to help make a fire and (miraculously) got one going as we dined on a "gourmet" meal of salami, day old bread, peanut butter and apples. I wasn't acting food editor at the North Shore News for nothing, baby.

The next day was just as killer in terms of exercise as the first one, and maybe more so. A full five hours lapsed as we snaked through valleys, over the site of a landslide and past waterfalls. It was a bit of a cruel joke to learn that we had to climb the Giant Stairway to get back to our starting point. More than 500 stairs awaited us as we climbed to the top, sweating and muttering under our breath most of the way.

A two-hour train ride took us back to Sydney where we picked up the rest of our luggage at the hostel, showered, and readied for the eight-hour bus ride ahead that night. It wasn't the most comfortable way of travel after a long hard day like that but those bus seats felt a good deal more cushy than the bed of solid rock back on Mount Solitary.

On Friday morning at 6:20 a.m. we pulled into beautiful Coffs Harbour, 500 km to the north of Sydney, from where I'm typing this blog entry now. But I'll save those details for the next time. Plus, some great photos to come!