Abseiling, Climbing, Canyoning - BEST day yet!

Today was SO MUCH FUN!

First off, we had a really small group - just myself, a guy from Seattle of all places (we had a good chat about things to do there, decent neighbourhoods, nearby mountains, etc), and our fantastic guide, which was awesome because it meant virtually no standing around waiting!. A few short abseils followed by a few longer (abseiling is fun. Funfun. :D ) It was super windy though, so to avoided twisted ropes and tangling in trees we ended up doing some rock climbing instead of some of the originally intended abseils. Which is fine by me, I like climbing. ;)

From our perch on the side of one of the Blue Mountains (tangent: why are the Blue Mountains called "blue"? The trees are green, the rocks are orange... BUT when it gets really hot, the oil in the leaves of the eucalyptus trees evaporates creating a blue haze over the mountains. That's kind of cool :p ) we could see the smoke coming off the remainder of the big fire which we could smell last night. It was a controlled burn (like our forests, fire helps these ones regenerate), but it got really windy and ended up being rather larger than intended...

We then headed off to the Empress Canyon for my very first canyoning adventure. Verdict? funfunfunfun. VERY much enjoyed it! And finished off with abseiling 30 metres straight down through Empress Falls (slippery! :p ). The cool water was delightful (in a wet suit... far to chilly without haha). All in all, this was hands down one of the funnest activities I have ever done! Ridiculously good fun. :)

Went for a walk to the Three Sisters while
waiting for the film to be developed

The only sad bit is that I haven't got a lot of photos - my camera isn't waterproof and the disposable one we split resulted in very few discenable photos - pity, but it was super super fun so its barely raining on my parade :p ... though it DID rain this evening. Real rain, too, not just drizzle! Which means its actually relatively cool out, which is delightful.

When I got back, I bumped into a guy from Wales we played board games with back in Kaikoura - neither of us knew the other was coming to Oz haha. Also, if anybody missed this back in January, it is rather fantastic and worth watching the full 30 seconds... seafoam storm in Queensland (google it if you have no idea what I'm talking about...)

Alright, back to my book and milo :)