Hey, these are just some more scenic pics from the blue mountains, what is it about water that is so relaxing and makes you want to take a picture!the first one i thought was just really pretty, amonst all the huge trees in the forest was this small palm tree next to a waterfall, nice i thought! the other is along the track we took, originally we decided to follow a track down the mountain accompanied by loads of other people, at the bottom however we decided to go the other direction and found ourselves not seeing anybody for over half and hour which became a little worrying as we didn't have a map! we finally found a sign post and found ourselves walking up over 900 steps to get back to the top! a very good workout!

another day in the blue mountains we decided to hire bikes out to ride the 33km track around the rim of one of the mountains. the way there we took at a leisurely pace stopping to admire the views etc, we got to within 1km of the end and just couldn't face the last hill! our legs were shakey and shattered and our lungs were about to burst! so we turned back! the hills we were cycling on were so steep and rocky that on a few occassions going downhill i had to jump off my bike to avoid falling off! it was a race against time to get back both of us pulled into the shop with our lungs coming our out mouths we were so knackered! still we got some beautiful views, theres nothing like mother nature!

this is one of the beaches i was talking about before when we did the coastal walk from bondi to coogee beach, we walked all the way along the rims you can see and beyond the far hill to get to coogee beach - it was a relief to get in the water to cool down but we didn't last long because like all sydney beaches the water was F freezing!! great day out though!







This is gav and i outside the sydney opera house, we went for a tour a mis-judged how far away our hostel was and had to run for 20 mins in 40 degree heat to get there on time - you can imagine the sweat pouring down our faces! the tour was really good, told us all about how they built it, the fact that you are suppose to feel like you are on a luxury ship and once inside it really does feel like it, especially out the back facing the water. we went to see a show there too, we nearly went to see an opera but it was listening only seats so instead we went to a festival show (sydney festival in jan every year) and well it was ok but not really our kind of thing. a story told by dancing to music - i guess were just not arty enough to get the gist of it! it was good though and anyways, we can say weve seen a show at the sydney opera house!

oh, we didn't do the harbour bridge climb, its extremely overpriced and you can't even take up your own camera!! we did however walk across the bridge and got some good views there, the bridge climb is just walking up steps anyway so didn't look all that inviting! the views from the walk were good enough for us!!

thats it for sydney and australia, off to new zealand!!!!!!!