Monday 11th January.

It's a sad day for me today. It's my last day in Sydney! I have definitely fell in love, and this place has stole my heart. I could easily have stayed for a lot longer. We started our day with some free pancakes they do at the hostel on Monday's, then after we checked out, we sat down to plan our next few days. We couldn't stop laughing at how last minute we had left it, and how I almost booked us in to an 'over 50's' hostel in Newcastle (Australia) before I realised. Sam who runs the hostel, Jamie's boyfriend, was behind us tidying up and heard us giggling and came over to see how we were and what our plans were next. He recommended some places to visit, so we added them to our list. We are spending the next two nights in the blue mountains in our camper van so we booked some tickets for tomorrow on a 'hop on, hop off' bus which takes you round the mountains. We decided to take a break from planning, and took a train and a bus to Bondi beach. It's down a steep hill and was really pretty. We lay down on a grass area above the sand so I could lie in the shade to avoid making my sunburn any worse, and sat and painted my nails. We were only there for an hour or so because we wanted to get some lunch back in the city before we went to get our camper van. We had lunch at 'incafe' which is next door to our hostel, and were watching as the fire brigade turned up at our hostel, which luckily turned out to be a false alarm. The first thing Kirsty said when we saw them was, "I hope our bags are ok". Yep don't worry about the people Kirst! When I finished my steak sandwich, I emailed the camper van company to let them know we would be there about 4pm, and they emailed back to say they close at 4 so to make sure we got there before. We jumped up and grabbed our bags from Sam, who was looking after them, and power walked to the bus station. We got on a different bus to the one we were told to use, but it looked like it was going the same way. We had been told it would take about 45 minutes on the bus so when the bus driver told us he was going where we wanted to go and it was only two stops, we both said he's either completely misunderstood or these stops are really far apart! Turns out he misunderstood. We held the whole bus up by getting maps out to show the driver, and again were in a fit of giggles by the time we had sat back down. When we eventually found our stop, it was about a ten minute walk to the camper van office. Dale, who was English too, gave us a run through of our van, and after us asking a million questions I think he was wondering if we were even safe to drive it. I was designated driver first so Kirsty was navigator. The van was easy enough to drive, and they drive on the same side of the road as the UK so that was no problem. The fact it was rush hour and that the indicators are the opposite side of the steering wheel however, was more of an issue. I was trying to listen to Kirsty's instructions and had the windscreen wipers going crazy instead of the indicators, which meant I was also turning off roads without the other traffic realising where I was going. We were laughing so hard i almost missed a sharp left turn to the petrol station. An Australian man had to help us once we were there too as we must have looked clueless, but I think we were just too busy laughing at the previous events. Back on the road, we headed for the blue mountains. It took a couple of hours, and we stopped off at a supermarket on the way to get food supplies for a couple of days. We noticed a puddle under the van and rang the van office who told us it was just water from the air con. Better to be safe than sorry, we didn't want an oil leak when we were 3000 ft up the mountains. By the time we arrived on site at Blackheath, the sun had just set so we were trying to park up before it was too dark to see anything at all. We were left a map and instructions on the office door at the front of the site. It was a one way system and it went round a loop and back on itself. Our spot was right on the bend at the back. We curb crawled round trying to find number 24. We noticed number 26 and realised we had gone too far round the bend. The people in number 25 were outside staring at us, with their big tent and all the works setting up, clearly regulars at this things. Instead of going back round the loop I just started reversing back up the hill and round the bend, and Kirsty just burst out laughing and said "Yeah, Hi Neighbours" and that was it, I slammed on the breaks and laughed so hard I couldn't breathe and very very nearly wet myself. It was like a scene out of an American comedy, and we were the crazy new neighbours in our camper van, not knowing what we were doing. I still think back and laugh about it now. We settled down and went to the main kitchen to cook some hot dogs and by the time we had done that we were ready to sleep. When we first got in to bed it was really warm, but we woke up early hours of the morning really cold and had to pull our sleeping bags down, then I slept through.