Woke up in a lovely room :) and had a great breakfast. Parked at the train station for my day long Jenolan Cave Tour. No luck in finding cell phone :(
At office, Toni was very helpful and about 10 of us caught the bus out of town. Darryl, a local man who had worked for the company for 5 years, was our expert driver. He could manage those small windy roads deftly. Glad it was him and not me. I got a seat up front (so as not to get motion sick).
Very nice Sydney lady with her family visiting from India (she has been to the caves numerous times).
Also met Gabrielle, a retired teacher from Melbourne. She was in the area visiting her daughter, a law student, for Mother’s Day. (I almost forgot -- Happy Mother’s Day again Mom.) She was a very classy looking lady and friendly. She gave me lots of information about many Aussie things --- school system, Victoria area, and the post office.
Two nice Iranian young ladies were on our tour with one of their moms (who was visiting from Iran). We took turns taking pictures of each other in the caves.
Near the Jenolan caves, the road was blocked. We initially thought for road works -- wrong -- they were filming a car commercial it looked like -- a Chevrolet Captiva (here they are called Holdens so it must be for somewhere else). What the best part was --- the crane truck was a Ford F350 :) gotta love it. Saw it again on the way back to Katoomba too.
When we got to the Jenolan Caves area, there were very steep dropoffs and the road had big white posts with mesh. (Darryl said the white posts were from the Sydney Harbour Bridge.)
When we got there, the first thing we saw was a platypus in Blue Lake. I took that as a sign of good fortune. Darryl and Gabrielle said many Aussie had never seen a platypus in the wild.
Blue Lake without the platypus
Jenolan Caves complex
My first cave was the Lucas Cave -- 900 + stairs. Douglas Hayes was our expert guide. And yes there were many stairs. One cave was called the Cathedral and we got to sit in chairs and in the dark he played music. The cave very slowly was lit from the bottom up -- amazing and magical. Wandered around many different caves and one was even lit in beautiful colors.
Didn’t have but 20 minutes for lunch - contraband peanut butter sandwich and Doritos beside Blue Lake. Before I could even get my sandwich out of the bag -- my friend the platypus appeared. :) yeah.
Other wildlife also
Stuart Adams took us through the Orient Cave (only 300 stairs). He was much more verbose. This cave he thought was much better, more wet (beginning formations) than the other cave. But I liked the other one better. This one was different in that it was more crowded (with people and with formations).
looked like Sacre Couer to me
On the way back, I got schooled on Wasaroos (ie the kangaroo I ran over), differences in Wallabies, the post office, the weather in the Blue Mountains etc. Darryl and Gabrielle were a wealth of information.
At the hotel, the internet finally was working a little and I had a great Indian butter chicken and rice for dinner. (After 1200 stairs, I treated myself to a great dessert too.) One of my favorite British mysteries was on -- Jonathan Creek. Also the normal standbys of Family Guy and How I Met Your Mother (gotta love what we export) were on too.
my view at dinner
I don’t have to get up early tomorrow morning. What a treat before leaving for the Hunter Valley. The temperature here has dropped considerably. I think losing that weight helped with those stairs -- I kicked butt on them (and my legs are barely tight, of course I have stretched them out).
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