B Adventurous: Taronga Zoo & Katoomba

Thanks to my lovely friend Jeremy, he hooked me up with free tickets to the Taronga Zoo (normally about $46...eek!). I headed over there one fine morning on the Taronga Zoo ferry. Never did get sea sick on the ferries so maybe my stomach is getting better. After we got there we were herded onto a bus (I didn't realize we could have actually walked there), and were taken to the entrance for $2. Not too shabby actually, because as I was at the zoo I realized it was on a serious hill so I was glad to have paid the two bucks to be taken to the top entrance so I could go down to see stuff instead of up.
Luckily, I timed the visit just right to see some of the reptiles, the kangaroos, and then the elephant show. The star of the elephants is currently the little elephant above, named Mr. Shuffles. The story goes that the zoo keepers thought he was dead before he was born so nobody made the effort to be around when the mother started labor. After he came out, the mother nudged him to get up (I guess if they don't within a certain amount of time after being born its a bad sign). Somehow he ended up behind this gate and the mom went buck wild, alerting the other elephants who also began making a fuss. He ended up living and is quite the miracle elephant. He's a precious little thing. Playing around with the other smaller elephant they have in the pen. There are also four other grown elephants, including his mom.

These pelicans were ginormous. I never realized how big they were. Some stupid girl and her friends were trying to get better (?) snaps of them, so they reached over the fence, which is juuuuust out of the photo on the right and were taunting it. It kept snapping at her, and watching from above I was really hoping it was going to rip her hand off and teach her a lesson. I hate people that have no respect for caged animals. No wonder there are so many attacks...and I'm not sorry to say they deserve it. :) I also saw some cool giraffes and an echidna. It looks kinda like a porcupine. It has a long nose, say, a smaller version of an anteaters with a long tongue. Cute little things, waddling along.

I also went to the Blue Mountains, to a small town called Katoomba. Pat was nice (crazy?) enough to drive me there so I didn't have to take the train. I stayed at the Flying Fox hostel, which was really cool. It was in a house, with about 6 or 7 rooms. I thought, oooooh I'm soooo smart, I'll stay in an all girls dorm so I don't have to deal with snoring dudes. WRONG! The first night I had to put in my ear plugs because this chick was snoring something AWFUL. What is the deal?! So ridiculous. So anyway, that afternoon I went to the market and picked up some kangaroo kebabs, some pineapple, and some bell peppers (they call them capsicum here...eh?). Then I prepared it, threw it on the barbie and cooked that up!

Its quite nice, the kangaroo. Raw it is really dark red and looks pretty gross. Its a bit chewier than beef so medium rare is much nicer. Ate that two nights in a row, and can't really complain. I thought my brain might have a fit and tell my stomach to get upset since it wasn't beef or chicken but KANGAROO, but I did ok. Got a little ill a couple times but when I thought 'its beef, its beef' I took it down like a champ. The second day that I was there I went on a 6k or so hike down to Linda Falls and back up the Furber Steps to Echo Point. It was a really nice hike, not overly well posted, but luckily with the signs and my map I figured out where I was going. I only saw a few people for the first hour or so and I started to get a little worried. Then 3 Swiss dudes passed me, I'm SOOO out of shape, and I followed their voices for a while to know I wasn't going the wrong way. Can I just tell you how many spider webs I broke through WITH MY FACE?! Every time I tried not to panic because I knew, from my own two eyes, how big these spiders actually are. And if anyone's heard the wolf spider story, you know I now get into a panic when there's massive spiders around.I opted to swing a stick in front of me after a while like an idiot, but at least I didn't have to do the spider panic dance when I realized I had one on my back! Hah!

So the top left snap of me isn't the best, but you can see the three little peaks of the 3 Sisters pretty much right above my head. My hike started around the back of those, and it took me all the way down to the bottom of the forest, so you can imagine how many stairs I had to take down. And, btw, I was wearing my versatiles. If you don't know what those are, they are the nature kind of pants with the zip off leg parts to make shorts/capris etc. I SWORE I'd NEVER wear those, after seeing them all over Europe. And here I am sporting them. Lemme tell you, they're amazing nature pants. Not too hot but nice to cover your legs from the bushes. Yay. Above is one of the waterfalls I came to, and left is part of the Furber Steps. They take you from the bottom of the forest to the top of the cliff. Wrecked my ish, but it was such a nice hike!

The reason they call it the Blue Mountains is because of the blue tinge the range takes on when viewed from a distance. The tinge is caused by mie scattering which occurs when incoming ultraviolet radiation is scattered by particles within the atmosphere creating a blue-greyish colour to any distant objects, including mountains and clouds. Either way, its pretty cool how they look blue. The snap of me below is the Echo Point lookout. Here's a kind of half-ass map of the trip. http://www.bing.com/maps/?v=2&where1=Katoomba%2C%20New%20South%20Wales%2C%20Australia&encType=1