I Come From a Land Down Under!

Monday, July 7, 2008

Blue Mountains

Today I was still feeling sick enough to not want to be at work, but apparently healthy enough to go on a day trip with my amigas. The following is a long story about my near death experience in the Blue Mountains. Sorry if the story seems all over the place, there was so much to write that it was difficult to put it into words on paper. The moral of this story is that if anyone thinks that there isn’t someone watching over them, they are indeed wrong, and there is evidence of that here!

(The aboriginal people must've been watching over us in the story that is about to take place)

(This is the emu sausage Jayne made us try before starting on our adventure. Jayne said that we were finally getting revenge from our experience at Featherdale Zoo)

So, if you haven’t heard of the blue mountains then they are the major mountains in Australia, and there are always all these stories about people going hiking there and getting lost for days, and then their bodies are found later because the bush is so thick. So.... we decided to head there on monday morning.

(Drinking water straight from the mountain.)

(We couldn't fingure out why they were called the Blue Mountains because everything was green. This particular area smelled fowl.)

It is like a 2 hour train out, and we caught a trolley to this place called Scenic World where they have the steepest train ride in the world and this really cool Sky Cable Car that takes you over the huge mountain valley on a cable, kind of like a zip line, on a large scale. So we planned on staying at Scenic World for a few hours and then moving on to another part of the mountains. Scenic World has 3 trails, a 10 minute, 30, and 50 minute, so we decided to take the 30. We got on what we thought was the trail and were goofing off taking pics, and going off the trail, but we always got back on the main trail and would continue on our hike. We were enjoying ourselves like normal, not knowing what our day had in store.

(This is the Sky Cable Car that goes over the valley, it has a glass bottom so it feels like you are floating over the trees below.)

(Here is the famous three sisters. I didn't know yet but I'd be seeing plenty more of these!)

About an hour in we were thinking, this is weird that it still doesn't seem like we are getting close, and we hadn't seen anyone all day, but we still for some reason kept moving forward. Like an hour later we see a sign that says 1.3 km to Scenic Railway, (we later realized this had said 13 km) which is where we needed to go so we kept trucking on. So another hour later we see another sign that says Scenic Railway 2 hours and then all these other trails pointing in the opposite direction.

(We hadn't realized yet what we had got ourselves into. This is where Jayne was playing our Australian tour guide, explaining that she had cleared the trail for the "advanced climbers." If only she knew that she wasn't kidding!)

By then it was like 3:20 and it for sure is dark by 5:00 here and we had little water left, no food, and no flashlights so we kind of got nervous, but we figured if we moved at a faster pace we could get back before dark. We all just were trying to act like it was going to be okay, So we literally started running at a pretty fast pace in the same direction we had been heading, for another 30 minutes, when we came to another sign that said Mt Solitary one way, and then the Scenic Railway 3 hours back in the direction we had come from.

(Part of the trail we walked on for what seemed like hours....Wait, it was hours!)

So you can imagine our horror. We had just ran for 30 minutes in the wrong direction, And it was getting later and later, and we had seen nobody all day, So we said a prayer as we all were realizing the seriousness of our circumstance and really didn't know what we were going to do. We decided that we obviously had to run at a pretty fast pace so we just started running back the way we had come from because we didn't know what else to do.

About 20 minutes into our run, we heard voices, and low and behold we see 3 boys walking towards us. These boys looked to be about Tyler’s age, and were all geared up for some camping or something. We were so happy to see real life humans and asked them if they knew what we should do. They said there was no way that we would be able to get back to Scenic world, and couldn't even believe we had come from that far, but that there would be a sign that said the Golden Staircase that was a harder hike, but that it could get us out of the mountains before dark. They said it would take us to a road, and if we kept right on it the whole time, eventually we would get to the town. They honestly didn't know how long this would take, but that it would be a much safer bet. We thanked them and went on our way. Obviously knowing that we were being watched over and blessed because there was no way we could have known any of this without their help. (Just on a side note they we hiking to Mt Solitary to camp for the night which was another 10 km)

We said another prayer because it still was getting later and later, and knew that we still had quite the journey ahead of us. Because we knew we had a hard hike we tried to pace ourselves a little bit so we walked a very fast pace to the sign that was roughly 20 minutes away. When we got to the sign we started up on the Golden Stairs. Remember that we had literally been hiking all day, running even for part of it, so we were extremely tired. Because we felt an urgency to get out of the mountains as soon as possible we kept trucking forward.

(This is the only picture I took in all the chaos. It was a beautiful view, but we pretty much ended up seeing the three sisters from every view possible. At this point we were on the completely opposite side of where we had started.)

(This is close to where we started out.... notice how close the three sisters are compared to the picture above.)

We started up and soon realized why it was called the golden staircase. It was a straight hike up and it literally almost killed all 3 of us. The sign at the bottom said 1 hour to the top and we knew we didn't have an hour. We really were dying, had to say another prayer so we would have energy to do it. I wanted to give up so many times, but obviously knew I couldn't, and somehow made it in like 40 minutes, right as darkness really started to cover the mountains. I honestly don’t know how we did it in 40 because we all started out exhausted, and it seemed like we weren’t going as fast as we would need to be to even make it in the hour the sign had stated. Miracles do happen!

(A sign that we saw on the dirt road...notice the Enjoy your stay, we definitely felt like that was an over statement)

When we made it to the road, it wasn't like a civilized road, it was just a dirt road in the mountains, and we couldn't see any houses so we still were nervous as to how we were gonna get out before it got super cold. The boys had told us what to do, so we weren't nervous how to get to town, just how long it would take. We all really were so dead tired, but had no choice but to keep walking. We walked for like 20 minutes when a car drove by, and Jayne tried to get it to pull over, but it wouldn't. So we walked, and walked, and walked. For about 20 minutes more until we came to a road that was paved and saw some houses. The boys had told us to keep right so we turned right down a road that eventually had some people on it, so we decided to ask them to make sure we were going in the right direction.

We asked a man and he told us we could stay on that road but that it would take much longer, and he said he would walk us to a better route. As we walked we told him our story, and he couldn't believe it, minus he said they get horror stories of people going into the bushes and never coming out. He pointed out where we needed to go, and by now it was completely dark. He said it would be at least 30 more minutes but we were happy to hear an end was almost in sight. We kept walking and I was really in a lot of pain in my legs, but we were by a road with people so I felt a lot better about our position so I kept moving forward.

Eventually we made it into town and found somewhere to eat. Right as we got into town, it started raining, another instance showing how blessed we were, having been outside for like 6 hours lost in the rain forest, and no rain! So we were able to catch a train home and had the 2 hour trip home to think about what had just happened.

(We were exhausted so as soon as we could accept that we were safe and sound on the train, we took some zzzz's before getting to Sydney)

I really did think I would have to spend the night in the bush, I was so scared! This is when we realized why they are called the blue mountains rather than green, because as it gets dark the mountains turn a very convincing color of....you guessed it, BLUE! There was so many things that should've set us off, like there being nobody on the trail, but somehow we overlooked them. I just feel so blessed to be alive, and I really do know that I am being watched over!