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Hey,
Just thought I'd give you a quick update. Since we last blogged we drove down to South West Rocks but decided against the diving because funds are not getting a bit low. After South West Rocks we drove to a place called Crescent Heads, which was recommended to us because it was supposed to be a really beautiful rugged place. We camped just next to the beach, which was really good looking and rugged but the journey there was a bit sketchy. The road there started off as a normal road but then halfway turned to a gravel track, which we thought would end pretty quickly but turned out to be quite a while, we were thrown all over the place. After that two kangaroos tried to commit suicide on our truck but we know all about the stupid/suicidal kangaroos so we drove past them really slowly so we could stop in time before they threw themselves in front of us.
After Crescent Heads we headed down to the Blue Mountains, which is just outside of Sydney. The scenery was really amazing, there were lots of beautiful valleys and waterfalls and we also saw the Three Sisters, which is a rock formation sacred to the Aborigines of the region. We spent a day there and camped that night and then saw some other sights the day after but the weather wasn't anywhere near as good. it was misty and wet and when we went to see a waterfall it kept appearing and disappearing behind the mist. After we'd had a few short walks we headed to the Sydney area because we had to hand in Sanchez the day after. We ended up staying in a caravan site that had a lot of hillybilly kind of permanent residents but it turned out to be ok in the end, we cleaned out the inside of the van that night.
The day after we drove into Sydney, which was a bit of a trauma, OZ is really easy to drive around apart from Sydney it seems. We eventually foundthe car wash to get the outside of the van done, which ended up costing $35! We had to wait 45 minutes for it to be done so went and grabbed a drink at a cafe down the road where we met a Spanish and Italian speaking Israeli who described everything in the cafe as amazing but to be honest the coffee and pastry I had were pretty good so he wasn't far off. The cafe was really cool, it was tiny but just had a really nice feel to it, they seem to have a lot of tiny hole in the wall cafes here in Sydney. When the van was ready we drove to the place where we were dropping off the van to find that we were actually at the wrong place and needed to take it to their office at the airport so we drove to the airport, which thankfully wasn't that hard to find. We filled it up again with petrol and took it to the place but were told it wasn't actually full and needed to fill it up, the needle was apparently a tiny bit off the full mark even though it had clicked full at the pump (it was just the gauge I think). We took it the ptrol station and put mroe petrol in though it kept clicking every second, so itwas probably overfilled. Once that was all done with we caught the train to our hostel, which was just next to the train station. By the time we arrived it was lateish so didn't do that much, just got ourselves settled and sorted out.
The next day we explored Sydney, we went to Darling Harbour, saw the Harbour Bridge(wanted to do a Bridgeclimb but its like $200), the Opera House (not as white as we expected), the Botanic Gardens and Hyde Park. We also went to this amazing little food market at The Rocks, I tried some home made dips and treated myself to Chicken Tikka wrap! It was the first time I'd eaten out and had some nice different food in a while. I then treated myself to some Banana Bread for dessert, it had some honey and lemon in and was pretty amazing. After our walk we chilled for a bit in the cafe at the hostel then decided to sort out some stuff for New Zealand so we went to a travel agent down the road and got our trips booked in New Zealand including a 140ft bungy jump for me near Queenstown, the biggest in Australasia! This seems a scarier prospect than the skydive because I have to actually throw myself off a ledge into a canyon whereas for the skydive I just stuck my legs out of the plane and the guy was the one throwing us out. After that we went out for dinner at an Italian called Zia Pina's, which was absolutely rammed full when we arrived at 5.45 and carried on that way all night. We managed to squeeze in on a table near the door, my Gnocchi was nice but Elisa wasn't that impressed with the pizza, not true Italian. After that we went to a Chocolate Cafe, I had a posh Mocha-kind-of-thing. Today we're going on another walk to the harbour and maybe going to the Aquarium.
Tomorrow we're off to New Zealand, our flights at 9 so got to get up and go pretty early. We're looking forward to it but not looking forward to the cold weather, it's chilly enough here and its only in the teens but in NZ it'll be minuses maybe so we'll be shivering for two weeks.
Hope all is well in England and we'll be seeing you soon.
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