Australia, The Blue Mountains

My friend Kim was going to Katoomba in the blue mountains about 60 miles west of Sydney for the weekend. I hitched a ride without knowing much more than that there was good hiking here. I spent most of yesterday hiking in the canyon area below Wentworth Falls. I met several talkative locals and got some good, but conflicting intel on the most important places to go over the next few weeks... I also hiked some of the trail with a father and son who were training for a 96km trek in Papua New Guinea. They were on their second trip up the canyon wall for the day, but I'm still glad I could keep their pace. 

Walking along the Darwin trail.

Looking out through a hole in the creek bed.

Wentworth Falls.

Australian for "easy trail". I might have been beyond the point the sign was referred.  

Wentworth Falls from where I had lunch.

You can almost see the whole falls here. It's a couple hundred meters tall. 

"Bridge."

Smaller but still nice water fall.

Vick and Matt. I hiked most the way back up and had a cup of coffee at the top with them. 

A different perspective of the falls on my way out. For reference the off colored dots on the fall wall are hikers and this only shows the top half the falls. 

There were a lot of places where the trail was under the cliff like this. 

A nice sunset to end the day, 

One thing that keeps coming up here. Every time I meet an Australian and they find out I am an engineer they want to put me to work out in the mines... The stories on pay keep going up with each person I talk to, most are talking from two to three hundred thousand a year for engineers. I just keep telling them I'm retired and traveling for the time being. If people are making that kind of money, I guess that does explain the 16 dollar price of this breakfast...