After getting all appropriately dressed, we headed out. We were heading out to Katoomba and the Blue Mountains again, but stopping by at Blacktown on the way in order to check out the Featherdale Wildlife Park. Since our itinerary was a little complicated, I decided to ask the ticket agent on the best way to handle it. First I asked him whether we could stop off in Blacktown if I bought roundtrip tickets to Katoomba. He said no, you can't stop off somewhere on the way. OK. That's fine. So then I told him that I wanted to buy tickets to Blacktown, then to Katoomba, then back to Circular Quay, where we were. I figured it would be more convenient to buy all the tickets for the day at once, so I wouldn't have to keep buying tickets all day. Well, here's where things turned weird, because the guy was not helpful at all. I forget what the actual conversation went like, but he kept asking me where I wanted to go, like "You want to go to Blacktown?", and at some point, he told me that what I wanted to do -- going to Blacktown and then Katoomba, was not doable. So in the end I gave up and just bought the two tickets to Blacktown.

Well, stupid me, with the train tickets out of the way, I decided to ask him if I could buy a bus pass, since I had looked the routes up the previous night. I knew I wanted to buy a TravelTen pass -- ten bus rides (as long as it was within one or two "sections"), and it wasn't limited to one person, so for a roundtrip bus pass, Patricia and I would end up using four uses out of ten. Well, Mr. Unhelpful told me that they didn't sell bus tickets, even though their website said that the passes were sold at all train ticket counters. Well, when I finally conveyed that I didn't want a single bus ticket (which nobody sells -- you just buy it when you get on the bus), he then wanted to know what type I wanted. Now I think he wanted to know what color I wanted (1-2 sections, or 3 sections, etc...). But I had no idea what type I wanted, I needed his help -- I told him I wanted one so I could take ht 725 bus. Oh man, that set off another round of confusion and I just gave up and decided it couldn't possibly be any worse at the Blacktown station. So we took off (by this point, there were like five people behind us in line). I was obviously a tourist. Was it too much to ask to help me to figure out what I need to buy to do what I want? Ugh. That was my one experience of unfriendliness in Sydney. He was Chinese, bleah. I figure it probably wouldn't have been so bad if I was talking to somebody at Central station instead.

So after that experience, when we got to Blacktown, I decided to try to make it as easy as I possibly could on the ticket agent there. I asked if they sold bus tickets (she said no). Then I asked if she sold Ten passes (she said yes, rrrggh...), and I confirmed with her that I wanted to blue one (1-2 sections).

Well, just our luck, when we got on the bus, the bus driver said that he didn't take the TravelTen passes because the route was operated by a private bus company....whaattt??!! So we had to pay for the bus separately anyways (and fumble around for the necessary change...)

Well despite all the hassle, it was completely worth it to get to Featherdale. Definitely one of the top highlights of the trip. I thought we were early, but the park had already opened. We rushed over to the koalas to pet them and get some pictures. For me, the best part was that the were fairly big areas where the wallabies, kangaroos, and emus were all in the same area as us (translation: you step in their poo a lot...), and we got to feed them. We were early enough that all the wallabies and kangaroos were all clustered around the entrance door -- guess they knew that they were going to get food. You basically get ice cream cones filled with feed ($2 each or something, but the ones that we got, we didn't know you were supposed to pay). Other people (especially children) would drop theirs, usually because they were afraid when the animals would try to eat the cone/feed. The emus were scarier since they would peck at the cone. I probably ended up getting more than 10 cones -- I tried to give them back to the kids if they were still around.

Back to the train station and off to Katoomba, whether the cold wind was more bearable now. It was getting late, around 2-3pm, and I was afraid that the sun might set on us while we were out hiking. We started off down Katoomba's main street, and oh man, it was a lot longer than I thought it would be! I thought it would be shops and stores all the way down, but halfway, it turned into a more resedential area. So we trudged down until we got to Echo Point where we could see the Three Sisters.

By this time, it was very lightly sprinkling (more like misting), and I went to ask the i-site people in the gift shop whether they thought the weather would hold (they said to look at the daily forecast, which was pretty useless) and if we could make the trail. My info said that the trail was 2-3 hours one way (I was planning to take another route back, which would be another 2-3 hours), but the lady said that it was probably only 90 minutes. So we decided to go for it.

Heading down the Giant Staircase was hard -- from the description, I thought it would be pretty wide, but it was actually a pretty narrow and winding staircase, so Patricia had trouble getting down. We passed some people who were going to the section of the staircase that went to the first Sister, but after that, we only encountered a guy and his kids on their way up, and on the rest of the path there was nobody. It was nice and not thronged with tourists. Didn't get to see any wildlife -- maybe we were making too much noise.

When we got to the end, we had a choice to make -- either try to get to the scenic railway that would take us back up the cliff, or head up the Furber Steps. It was basically 5 minutes until the last railway car left, and we didn't have a good idea how much further it was from the fork, so we decided to go up the steps. Except we found a sign that said that the rail platform was pretty close, so we ran to see if we could catch the last rail.

There was nobody there. Except I saw a man in a wooden shack -- he turned out to be a wax dummy. Silly me. That's OK, Patricia was fooled when some hidden speakers started playing. Well, we decided to take some pictures on the platform since it was a pretty good view and then we heard the railcar coming down -- yippee!! So they took us back up on a pretty scary ride -- they advertise themselves as the steepest ride in the world, and yeah, it was pretty much at least 70 degrees (probably close to 80 degrees) close to the top, so half-way through you were basically standing on the seat in front of you. That was not good for Patricia. Even I probably would have preferred to climb up the steps, even though the sun was setting. When we got to the top, we caught the last tour bus heading back to Katoomba.

Back at Sydney, the train stopped at Central station -- I thought we could walk back to the hotel, but it turned out to be farther than I thought. We ended up taking a taxi back, but not before stopping by a nice Japanese restaurant on the second floor of a building. It was more of a traditional Japanese place, so we ordered stuff like yakitori and those little octopus balls that I can never remember the name of. Tsukiyaki or something.

Day 3. We didn't freeze -- we actually got pretty hot during the hike and started shedding layers left and right. Definitely getting to hold and pet and feed and generally be around the wallabies and kangaroos was awesome. They were really tame. Yay!

We had to get up early since we had to meet the bus that would take us to the Jenolan Caves at 9am. That was when the bus would leave Katoomba, which itself was about 2hrs away by train. So we got up at 6am in order to catch the train. If we were completely unadjusted, that would have made it 1pm, so it wasn't too bad. The train ticket prices were actually decent too, roundtrip it was $25. So it's just the airport tickets that they charge an arm and a leg for.

Let me take a moment to remark on payment in Australia (and to a lesser extent, New Zealand). It looks like credit is not as prevalent over there -- cash is still predominantly used. We tried to use cash too where possible, because of the extra 3% fee associated with converting from USD that our credit card companies charge, but we were only carrying so much cash around. The first weird bit is that when you use your credit card, they ask you, "PIN or sign?" I guess a lot of people over there can enter in a PIN to verify the charge. Anyways, I don't know if my credit card has a PIN or not, so I always told them that I sign for the credit card. And 90% of the time, they would look at the back of the credit card and check to see if the signatures match.

Well this is a problem for me because as I found out on my very first transaction (at the train ticket counter in the airport), I neglected to sign my name on the back of my credit card. And that's because nobody in the US cares about your signature. Here's one man's experiences with what you can get away with in the US (there's also a part 2): http://www.zug.com/pranks/credit/. If you're too lazy to read it (it's a funny read), he basically escalates the signature on the receipt. Here are some of the signatures he makes that nobody cares about: An X. "Please check ID." "I stole this card." Shamu (with a picture of a smiling whale). Some stick figures. A musical staff with notes (with lyrics). The only time in which he is stopped is when he went to Best Buy to buy their most expensive HDTV (all three of them in stock), and tried to sign it "NOT AUTHORIZED". (In fact, Best Buy probably could have sold him the TVs, it doesn't actually matter what you sign your name as: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2864/does-it-matter-if-you-sign-a-contract-with-a-name-thats-not-your-own)

So I'm at the ticket counter, and the guy behind the counter tells me that I need to sign my name on the back of my credit card. The first thought that comes into my mind, "That doesn't provide any security at all -- what are you going to do, check to see if the signature that I just signed in front of you matches the signature that I wrote two seconds later?" Anyways, it was a moot point since I couldn't write anything on the back of my credit card with the ball point pen provided. So instead I just showed him my driver's license instead, which satisfied him. In fact, I'd say about 70-80% of the credit card transactions I made over there, the cashier or clerk conspicuously checked to see if the signatures match. Of course, I couldn't write on the back of my card with a ball point pen (I finally managed to get a faint "A" as part of my standard, "Ask for ID"), so I had to keep explaining that it meant to say, "Ask for ID" on the back and show them my ID. So that was different.

Back to our trip. We probably got slightly scammed by the taxi ride over to the train station -- he said his meter was broken and charged us $15 (the return trip was like $11). We barely made the express train. The train was pretty empty this early in the morning, and all the seats were facing backwards (we boarded at Central, which was the departing station for this train). The seats were relatively easy to switch over to face the other direction (unlike CalTrain -- I can never figure out how to change them...). Patricia switched over three or four in a row before finding one she liked, I guess. =p

The train ride was uneventful, but when we stepped off at Katoomba, man, it was freezing!! I mean, I still dressed warmly since I knew we would be going into cold caves, but I thought I could save my really warm wear for the Tongariro crossing. Originally I thought if we had some free time we could head to the end of Katoomba's main street to go to the info center and ask questions about the hike we would do the next day, but it was just too cold to even walk a few blocks down. We were a little early for the bus, so we did walk down a little bit -- primarily to find something we could pack in our backpacks for lunch. We ended up getting some sandwiches from Subway. We also found a small little mall off the street that provided some shelter from the wind and there was a quaint little shop that we got some hot chocolate and a muffin to recover from the cold. I also bought some gloves since I realized when I pulled mine out of the suitcase in the morning that my old gloves had a couple holes in them from my New York/Washington trip a couple years ago.

When we were maybe 10km (metric, yay!) away from the caves, the bus ran into a traffic jam of sorts. There were a bunch of cars going our direction stopped on the road. The road wasn't actually designed to handle tour buses, so there was no way that our driver could get us past the cars. There were a bunch of people standing around, so the driver jumped out and went to see what was happening. Turns out, a car had gone over the side of the road, and one of the persons was injured. Some of the other people in the bus (there were ~15 of us) said they could see the car down below, but I never got a glimpse. The drop off the side was pretty steep, maybe 300ft (imperial, yay!) at ~70-80 degree incline at most places. It looks like the people climbed back up the easiest route, and even then, it was probably about a 50 degree incline. The injured person was bleeding from his arm -- I stayed in the bus so I didn't see how bad it was -- whether it was a cut, or it was broken, or what. There were a couple french dudes in the bus who went to go help (one was a dentist). We didn't actually end up stopping that long; they apparently got the bleeding to stop, and our driver couldn't find a first aid kit in the bus. So when it looked like nobody was in any serious danger we went on towards to the caves (also, we could get more help for them there).

The first thing the driver did when we got to the caves was to let the rangers know what had happened, and then he gave us the tickets for the caves and we went off. When booking the tour I didn't really know which caves we would have time to tour. The tour people said we really only had one option if we wanted to do two caves, the Lucas cave and the Orient Cave, with a short 30min break in between for lunch (which is why we grabbed the sandwiches). It was actually warmer inside the caves than outside with the cold air, so we weren't suffering badly at all. Our second tour guide (for the Orient Cave) mentioned in passing that a helicopter had come by to take somebody out, so I assume that it was the guy with the arm injury, and he made it safely.

The caves were fun. There were all sorts of interesting structures, and the tour guides would tell us the names of a few (I'll post examples in pics and captions). Patricia mentioned she could see bats in some of the holes, but I wasn't so sure if they were really bats or not. The second group miffed me a little bit because there was this family with a tall, red-headed kid, and the kid kept touching different formations even though we weren't supposed to touch anything. The Lucas cave was a good introduction to caves -- I've never toured a cave before, so to have all the lights prepositioned and everything in order to see the entire cave was nice. I only remember being in two other caves: an Indian cave in Yosemite, which was tiny and none of us had a light (except for the leader) and I had to continuously bump into the girl in front of me for fear of getting left behind, and the one in Seattle that I went to with Jason and Prasanth -- we had to bring our own lights for that one too. So my previous experiences have only been flashlight/match illumination.

I didn't bump my head or fall down once. Yay.

The Orient cave was cooler because it had a whole lot of examples of helictites which are like stalagmites and stalactites except they grow sideways and curvy and basically every which way except straight up or down.

The gift shop afterwards had a group in it that was embarrasingly Chinese. One lady took something out of its bag, and the shop owner was kind enough not to make them buy it, but they had a hard time getting it back into the bag. And one man tried to haggle the price.

We had some time to wait for the train when we got back, so we looked around a little bit (suffering from the cold), and ended up getting some food to eat on the train. I got a bacon and egg burger that was pretty nice. Bacon is different in Australia, it looks more like slices of ham, but with fatty edges. We made the upper level of the train car we were in smell like food. This Chinese family also boarded a little later -- the daughter looked like she was at least fifteen or so, but when she talked with her dad, she sounded like she was closer to six or seven. I originally thought that maybe she was deaf, but it sounded more like she had some sort of neurological issue. It made me a little sad.

Day 2 was cold, but I would be prepared the next day -- we were going back to Katoomba, so I would make sure that I had my thermal pants, scarf, new gloves to protect me from the cold, and my hat to protect me from the sun.

We were way early for check-in, but our room was already free, so we dumped our luggage into the room before heading off for the Taronga Zoo. We thought the hotel concierge would have some better info on whether the deals on trains/buses/ferries were worth it, but I decided it was pretty much not worth it. The two main train rides that we were taking out to the Blue Mountains were not within the area covered, so we'd have to buy them anyways. It didn't look like we'd be taking that much public transportation for it to be worth it. We also found out that a DayTripper pass was like $17 compared to the $15 we paid for the train from the airport. So it totally would have been worth it, except we found out a couple days later that trains to/from the airport aren't covered by the passes. Haha.

It was a quick walk back to the harbor (they call it the Quay over there, pronounced "key") and caught the ferry to go to the zoo. We couldn't figure out whether to get the ZooPass or not -- The ZooPass gives you 10% off the entire cost of zoo entry and the ferry roundtrip. But we had a coupon that gave us 20% off the entry to the Zoo. Of course, without knowing the cost of zoo entry, we couldn't figure out which one was the better deal, so we asked the guy at the ferry ticket counter. He told us it was about the same amount either way, plus if we buy the ZooPass, we don't have to wait in line again to pay at the zoo entrance, so we decided to get the ZooPass.

The ferry ride over was pretty great. The Quay is basically in between the Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Opera House, so as the ferry left the dock we were basically running back and forth between the port and starboard sides getting fantastic close-up pictures of both. Once it got a little further away, then you could get pics of both the Opera House and the Sydney skyline, and then even further away, you could get the bridge in the picture as well. On the other side of the Opera House there's another small bay that held a few warships in dock. It had never occurred to me to think that Australia had their own high-tech military ships, so that was a little bit of an expanding-mind moment for me.

Once we disembarked, we had the choice to either take the Sky Safari in (like the ones that used to be in Disneyland before they took them out, probably because of lawsuits or something), or have the bus take us to the new entrance. Well, the ferry was of course super-crowded and so the line to the Sky Safari was already stretching out and besides, Patricia is scared of heights, so we hopped in the bus and rode the five minutes to the entrance. Of course, once getting there, we found out that getting the ZooPass actually costed more money (but only one or two dollars). And additionally, there was so many people with ZooPasses that there was a line that we had to wait in, and it was longer than the lines to buy an entrance ticket (one ZooPass line, three or four regular lines). There was hardly anybody in the regular lines. Oh well.

One of the primary reasons we went to the zoo was to get close to the koalas. I think it was here that we found out that it is illegal to cuddle koalas in NSW, so we would have to settle for just petting them. But we didn't want to pay for it at Taronga Zoo since we were going to other places with koalas as well, so we passed on it. For the rest of the zoo, I'll let the pictures (and captions) speak for themselves.

The ferry ride back was pretty crowded, guess everybody else was finishing up with the zoo at the same time we were, so it was a bit harder to get some pictures. Once we rested a little bit, we dressed up and walked a couple blocks down to our dinner reservation at the Summit restaurant. I'd been under the impression that it was at Sydney Tower (like the Space Needle), but instead it was at the top of some other, more low-key building. The view was still great, though, and we also later read some reviews that the food at Sydney Tower was not so good -- it was just good to be there for the view. Actually, the food at the Summit was not so great either, but it wasn't any fault of the restaurant. The day had just been totally exhausting and we were just about ready to drop. Remember that we had basically been awake at ~4:00am having breakfast on the plane, and now it was close to 9:00pm. Normally I would have ordered a dessert, but by the end of dinner we were so pooped that I just wanted to get back to our room. So the experience was probably affected by that.

Day 1 was great. Some good sightseeing and animals to watch. Not quite adjusted to the time difference yet, but that was planned because next up we had an early day...

So I just came back from Sydney and New Zealand...hopefully I can write down my experiences while there when everything is fresh in my mind. I'll post the pictures and videos on facebook, but try to pick out some especially good ones for this blog. The general timeline was:

7/11, leave SFO/LAX

7/13, arrive SYD (Sydney)

7/17, arrive AKL (Auckland)

7/26, return LAX/SFO

I don't have any pictures of the trip there -- I was more concerned about getting there with all my stuff and Patricia to have my camera out taking pictures of various airports. First, we got dropped off at the international terminal at SFO, when we really wanted to be at the domestic terminal, so we had to lug our baggage all the way to the other terminal.

The flight to L.A. was a little weird. There was a man who didn't seem quite aware of things, although he seemed to be having a normal conversation with his wife. He reached up and pushed the attendant button when the plane was descending and all the attendants were strapped in their seats. Other shenanigans included someone with their electronic device still on while landing, and I thought I saw someone sleeping sideways across two chairs while we were landing, too.

We had several hours before our next flight left L.A., so we sat around watching a few TV shows. Then we went through security (they told us that all the food places were closed next to the gates due to construction). When we got to the gate, there were a lot of people there and the one electrical outlet in a decent place was taken. I wanted to recharge the PSP a little so that it would survive the entire flight -- my last experience was that the PSP could last just about the length to drive up to Oregon. Now that I think of it though, I think it was just that my music on the PSP could only last up to Oregon. Anyways, I ended up standing next to an outlet that was about waist high to recharge my PSP a bit. Pretty soon, all four outlets where I was standing were being used by others with their laptops.

The scary part was when the alarms went off. An airport security guy on a Segway came to where I was and very gruffly told this one guy that was walking by, "You. Come." Then he turned around and rolled back to the security lines (the gate we were at was right next to the exit of the security lines). The Segway guy (he looked Chinese) didn't even really check to see if the guy would actually comply or not. But there were no problems, and the guy went back and then proceeded to get questioned by Mr. Segway. In public. I was about 100ft. away. There were questions like, "Why did you leave when the alarms went off?", "Where's your luggage?", and most disturbing to me, "What's in the lunch bag?". I realized at that point that if this guy HAD been dangerous, then I had just been standing ~10ft away from him when he got accosted by security. Maybe he would have panicked and set off a bomb in his lunch bag. You got to admit, it is pretty suspicious -- single guy, no luggage, only a paper bag (he had a cup with a straw too, so he probably just got some dinner at the food court). Anyways, it was probably pretty embarrassing for the guy, and they kept the alarm going for quite a while (maybe 10 minutes or more) before letting him go to wherever he was going.

The flight was looong...besides sleeping, I also watched a BUNCH of TV shows I needed to catch up on. Well, maybe not that much, but a few hours worth. At the end I explored the on demand entertainment and ended up watching a little bit of Borat. I liked the part about the "Not" jokes. But when it got to the part where he was having dinner with the socialites, I couldn't watch anymore because it made me too uncomfortable. So I switched it off.

We got off and got our bags through customs OK, and then it was off to take the train to the hotel, since it seemed doable and cheaper than getting a taxi. We tried to figure out if one of the passes would help save us money during the rest of the trip, but it became too complicated and it didn't seem like most of the bus/trains we would be taking would be covered by the passes, so we just bought regular one-way tickets out to the harbor next to the hotel. It was like $15/person -- pretty expensive. I didn't think that the tickets would be that expensive, and I wondered how much the other train tickets would cost, since we would be travelling maybe ten times as far.

The train was crowded. No seats to sit down on until a couple people left. We were pretty much the only ones with luggage, so I guess most people were taking the train to go to work. We left SFO on Saturday around 3pm, and arrived in Sydney on Monday at 7am. Since out hotel was in the Central Business District (CBD), I guessed most people were business/financial types who go to work early.

We got to the hotel just fine, only a five minute walk from the train station along the harbor. It was a nice day. Yay!