Right. We got to the Blue Mountains on the 23rd of December after the long, long bus ride from Byron Bay. Our hostel was just around the corner from the train station, so we checked in abd tracked down some food. We had a wander down to the supermarket to pick up some food for the night and some beer for Christmas, then just relaxed in the hostel. It´s the biggest place we´ve stayed in so far so there were a lot of people to spend Christmas with. Unfortunately we ended up with two weirdos in our room, but we didn´t have to see them much.

On Christmas Eve we booked a 3 day tour around the area. There´s a trolley bus that takes you in a circle around the main sites. The first stop was Echo Point, with an amazing view of the Three Sisters - 3 massive stone columns - and of the entire area. We had tickets for a cable car ride with a transparent floor so you can see the 300m drop below you and I was really nervous before getting on! Heights make me dizzy... It was just a panel in the centre of the car that was glass, so it ended up being pretty cool. The ride was really short though, I´m glad we got it as part of the package and didn´t pay $10 when we got there! We then had a trip on the world´s steepest railway - 52 degrees! It was really shaky and you had to sit right back in the seat so you didn´t fall out! That was the best part of the tour. There was another cable car ride back up to the top. We took a little trip around the area and stopped off at a tea room and teapot museum for lunch. I never thought I´d have cream tea in Australia but it was really good! It was a strange building, I don´t know why anyone would want to set up a teapot museum. We bought some chocolates at the Blue Mountains Chocolate Co. shop on the way back (they were delicious) and headed to town to buy our Christmas dinner! We had the cheapest dinner on offer in town, chicken patty and chips, which ended up being a giant chicken nugget, chips and gravy. I felt like I´d ordered something off the kids menu!

On Christmas day myself and Ryan swapped presents, then the 3 of us packed up all the food and got the trolley bus out to a picnic area we´d spotted the day before. We passed Echo Point on the way but it was so cloudy that you couldn´t even see the 3 Sisters! Loads of tourists had come up from Sydney for the day on a completely pointless trip, it was so cloudy there were no views. By the time we started cooking it was pouring rain. I´m so glad the Aussie´s decided to put roofs on their public barbeques! Christmas dinner this year was crackers, pate, hummous and carrot sticks for starters, followed by burgers, sausages and salad for the main course! It didn´t even feel like Christmas! We bought some sliced turkey but coudln´t manage it with dinner so we had sandwiches made with the leftovers the next day. I suppose that bit was the same as Christmas at home!

On Stephens Day we´d booked a tour of the Jenolan Caves nearby, so after a post-christmas fry up we got a coach out there. Our bus driver was a bit of a nutter and spent the whole ride trying to tell jokes. I was glad when we arrived! The caves were quite interesting. They had some music and light shows which were really nice - the walls of the cave were lit up in really bright colours. I took loads of pictures, but I don´t suppose pictures of rocks look very interesting on a screen. We went to see ´Holmes´ at the cinema with a big group from the hostel that night, I really enjoyed it.

We left the Blue Mountins for Sydney on the 27th. Myself and Ryan had booked a hotel just outside the city, so we parted ways with Jennie at the station and arranged meeting the next day. We had trouble getting accommodation in the city for New Years - the cheapest hostel was charging AUD$3000 between us for 8 nights! We stayed at a hotel in Bankstown instead, and realised why it was cheaper... no one would ever want to go to Bankstown. It was grey and dingy with almost no shops or restaurants. The hotel was nice enough, it felt exactly like the Travel Tavern in Alan Partridge! I was expecting a Geordie busboy but we didn´t see one.

We had a Lebanese takeaway that night and stayed in with the TV. The only restaurants in Bankstown are Lebanese but I was very happy beingforced to eat schawarma, falafel and hummous! The Lebanese make good food.

On Monday the 28th we met Jennie in Sydney and went for a walk around town. It was cloudy and a bit wet, so our plans for heading to the beach were ruined. We walked around the markets and shops for a while, then got ready to go out that night. It was Jennie´s birthday so we were going for dinner with some of the people she met in Melbourne. It seems everyone was in Sydney for New Years! We had a buffet dinner, a couple of drinks, then myself and Ryan had to catch the last train back to Bankstown.

We met up again on Tuesday and finally made it to the beach! We took the ferry to Manly Beach hoping it would be quieter than Bondi. We didn´t see Bondi while we were in Oz, but if it was any busier than Manly you wouldn´t have been able to see the sand! The crowds there were mad! I definitely prefer the nice quiet beaches we´d been used to all along. It was a nice day though, we relaxed in the sun and watched people fry themselves by not wearing sunscreen.

On Wednesday we had a walk through the botanical gardens to see the views. It´s the best place in Sydney to get the opera house and the harbour bridge in one photo so we got the cameras out. Jennie went to the beach with friends but we expected it to be cloudy and hadn´t brought our swimsuits, so we had a walk around town and went to the cinema instead! We tried to see ´Avatar´ in 3D at the biggest Imax screen in the world (8 stories high!!) but they were sold out until the 3rd of January so we booked it for the 1st of January in 3D at another huge screen instead!

On the 31st we met up at 11am so we could find a spot to view the fireworks. I thought that people were exaggerating when they said we had to be there that early, but the place was already packed by the time we got there! We were sitting on the top of a steep hill so killed time watching people arrive struggling and slipping with crates of beer! By the time the 9 o clock fireworks started, some people were already passed out. What a waste. The fireworks were really good at 9, but the midnight ones were unreal! They spent $60,000 on fireworks alone, I´d never seen anything like it.

On the first we were up early to watch ´Avatar´.We really have gone to the cinema a lot since we left! The effects in the movie were amazing but I thought the story was a bit useless. It was definitely worth seeing in 3D on the big screen though. We were still a bit hungover so we went back to the hotel, had dinner and went for a dip in the jacuzzi. There´s nothing like a jacuzzi after a night out! They had a Family Guy day on TV, so we watched a couple of episodes and had an early night. We just relaxed again on the 2nd. We bought some cheese and crackers at Lidl and had an indoor picnic! That night we went out for a meal at a Lebanese restaurant. We were stuffed afterwards! They give you piles of meat and falafel with about 40 pitta breads and there was no way we could have finished it. It was a sad night as it was myself and Ryan´s last night out together before we parted ways.

On Sunday, my last day in Australia, I spent the morning on the internet calling people before being shipped off to the middle of nowhere in Peru! We popped to the shops to get some books for the very long journey to South America and went back to the hotel to pack and enjoy our last day together.

We were up very early on the 4th to get to the airport. Ryan had his bags with him too, he was heading South to Wollongong after dropping me at the departure gate. It was really strange saying goodbye after 4 months of being together 24 hours a day! I´m still not really used to it and it´s been weeks... We said our goodbyes and I got on the plane to Santiago.