Blue Mountains and dark forests

We were woken up by sunshine on Tuesday morning, and as that hasn't happened very often, we thought we'd better get on the road quick smart. First stop was Wentworth Falls, which gave us our first glimpse of The Blue Mountains. They were stunning. And a blue sky day too. The cameras were out, and they stayed out. The vistas just got better as the day went on. From the campsite at Katoomba, we walked to Echo point with views of 'The Three Sisters'. We then buzzed further up the road to even more impressive lookouts near Blackheath village. We planned a longish walk the following day to go underneath the Three Sisters, into the valley below.


The next morning however, brought some very different views. Lots and lots of white ones. The fog was down and the rains had come. We went on the walk anyway, but the lookouts were like staring at a big white sheet. A little disappointing, but not ones to shy from a bit of wet weather exercise, we donned our waterproofs and carried on down into the forest below. Down and down and down into a dark, misty forest. We reached the bottom of a long flight of steps and had a read of one of the information boards.

Now, I hardly ever read to the end of information boards. If the first few sentences don't grab my full attention, sub-consciously my legs start to move me away from the text. But anyway, for some reason, I got to the end of this one. Possibly because we are still in search of the elusive echidna, and the sign was about the different animals that lived in the forest, so I scanned through the possibilities to see if today might be our lucky day: wallabies (tick), koalas (tick), wombats (tick), possums (boring - seen loads in NZ, including one in our tent), bandicoots (maybe), gliders (ooo, sounds interesting), frogs (certainly the weather for them), lizards (hmm), death adders (...I'm sorry, what?). Death adders. One of the 'look out for this' wildlife tips, was a death adder. Incidentally, the sentence that followed suggested that "If you do see a snake it might be best to leave it alone". Might be best? A death adder? You don't say.

Just picture the scene. We are on a narrow track surrounded by foliage at the bottom of a LOT of steps, in a dark, wet forest, with nobody else about and there's a sign suggesting that you might want to leave the resident death adders well enough alone. Terrific. Do we press on with our loop walk, or do we turn tail and run back up the 1000 steps? In the end, the decision was made for us, because somebody came from the other direction looking decidedly unscathed. Not wishing to lose face, British stiff upper lip and all that, we carried on, but all the while (I at least was) scouring the floor for snake shaped sticks. After 10 minutes of silent tramping through death adder valley, we happened upon another group going the same way as us. Brilliant. If we slowed our pace a little and hovered by a few trees, we could stay behind them and use them as snake shields.

This cunning plan worked for a good while, and I think I actually tore my eyes away from the floor. Then disaster struck. They stopped for lunch. In want of anything better to do, we followed them to the picnic shelter and faffed about getting apples out of our bags, in the faint hope they might set off again. It was only then that we got a good look at our snake defenders. They were bikers. Big scary bikers, with lots of hair and big beards. In place of our anoraks, they wore leather jackets with chains and skulls. Instead of over trousers, they had ripped jeans. And our walking boots were no match for their bover boots. We decided to take our chances with the death adders.

And actually, it turned out to be a good walk. we didn't see any wildlife, which on balance, was probably a good thing. The fog stayed down and the rain kept falling, but after a few hours of not treading on snakes, you decide in the end that the snakes have got better things to do than wait to be trodden on. Added to which, towards the end, we came across a little boy who'd lost his mum in the scary dark forest. Helping him find her (she was just walking very slowly - probably something to do with the flimsy sandals she was wearing...in the muddy wet forest) certainly helped me to get a bit of perspective. Still, that'll teach me for reading to the end of signs.