Sydney Trip: The City

My last two days in Sydney I spent exploring the city. The downtown area was very easy to get around, and a lot of the city was accessible on foot from my hostel. I saw the obligatory Sydney Opera House and Harbor Bridge, checked out Chinatown, a historic area called The Rocks, and Darling Harbor. In a park area near the Opera House, I watched an interesting street performance. There was a contortionist twisting her body into weird shapes, and the grand finale of her show was fitting herself into a 16 inch square box on top of a 4 foot post. I also walked across the Harbor Bridge, which provided a nice vantage point to see the harbor and city. Sydney is a pretty fun city and seems like a good place to live.

Sydney Opera House and Harbor Bridge

View of Sydney from the Harbor Bridge

Sydney Trip: Blue Mountains

After going to Bondi Beach, I spent the next two days in the Blue Mountains about an hour and a half north of Sydney. My first day in the Blue Mountains, I went on a tour with the "Happy Coach." We did a lot of bushwalking through the mountains to some great views over the various valleys in the range.

The next day, I went on an rappelling / canyoning trip to Empress Falls. We spent the morning learning how to rappel, climbing down gradually taller cliff faces from 5 to 30 meters. After a lunch in the mountains, we went to a national park to trek through a canyon, culminating with a 30 meter rappel down a waterfall. It was so much fun! We hiked through the creek running through the canyon, slid down small waterfalls, and jumped into deep pools of water. At the end of the hike, we ended at the top of Empress Falls and rappelled down its 30 meter waterfalls. It was such a difference experience than anything I've done before, and I definitely want to do it again.

Learning to rappel

Hiking through the canyon

Empress Falls

Sydney Trip: Bondi Beach

This past weekend we got an extra day off from school for Anzac Day, so I decided to take a couple additional days off, make an extended weekend out of it, and go visit Sydney. I flew in Thursday night and since the weather was looking good for Friday, decided to go to Bondi Beach. It's a pretty beach, with lots of surfers and sunbathers. There was also a nice path along the cliffs to adjacent beaches which was quite scenic. I stopped for a fish and chips lunch, and the rest of the day on the beach was a nice relaxing start to my trip.

Daintree Rainforest

After my trip to the Great Barrier Reef, I went up to the Daintree Rainforest. It is the world's oldest rainforest and is a World Heritage site. I took a two day overnight tour of the area and learned a lot while seeing some great sights of the rainforest. One of my tour guides was an aboriginal man, so I got to learn a bit about their culture and he told us some interesting aboriginal stories about how various things in the rainforest came to be. On the tour, went to Mossman Gorge, did a short hike through the area, visited a small zoo of native animals, viewed the mouth of the Daintree River from a lookout in the Alexandra Range, and then got dropped off at our accommodations in the middle of the rainforest. I spent the evening exploring the beaches (which we couldn't swim in because of jellyfish.) The next morning, I explored around a bit more, then got picked up for the remainder of the tour. We went on a cruise of the Daintree River and spotted some saltwater crocodiles, visited the tourist town of Port Douglas, and saw the sunset from the Rex Range on the way back to Cairns.

Mossman Gorge

View from the Alexandra Range

Mangrove tree on the beach

Scuba Diving the Great Barrier Reef

For the past week, I was on the northeast coast of Australia along the Great Barrier Reef, in the city of Cairns. Most of this time was dedicated to getting my PADI Open Water Scuba Diving Certification. I spent the first two days of my mid-semester break in class, not to learn about engineering, but scuba diving. Leading up to those two days were probably the most excited I have ever been to go to class. There were about 10 people in the class and we went over the basic theory and skills of scuba diving. It was surprisingly fun... at least the time we spent in the pool.  It was strange to breathe underwater for the first time, but I got used to it after a little while.

After the two days of class, two other UW students and I went on a three day liveaboard dive trip on the Great Barrier Reef. Our first four dives were training dives to practice some skills and gain confidence in the open water of the ocean. After that, we had six more dives, including a night dive and a deep dive. They were absolutely amazing. It is such a unique experience to feel weightless underwater and to be able to explore the reef freely. The reef itself is gorgeous, with tons of aquatic wildlife. I saw a shark (it was small and harmless), turtles, a stingray, big clams, and hundreds of different fish.

The night dive was a lot of fun, it kind of felt like being a Navy Seal at times. We started the dive when it was pitch black out, and all we had to see with was a flashlight. After jumping in the water, we swam up along the side of the boat and it felt like something out of a James Bond movie. When we dove down, we would be followed by these big fish that have learned to hunt off of diver's flashlights. If you focused your light on a small fish, the hunter would swim out from underneath you and devour it. Or you could have fun tricking the fish by moving your light away at the last second.

Another special dive we did was the "deep dive". We went down to 75 feet underwater, and having done the dive, I am now certified to go down as far as 98 feet. Our instructor brought down some eggs to show us the effects of all the pressure at that depth. When you crack an egg, the yolk stays intact due to the pressure and you can bat it around underwater like a ball. Unfortunately, some fish have either caught on to this or can smell the eggs. One big fish followed us down during the whole dive and swept in to eat the eggs before we could even see the yolk.

So after ten dives on the Great Barrier Reef and over four hours underwater in the ocean, I am certified to scuba dive on my own up to 30 meters. I already can't wait to go again, and perhaps dive a shipwreck somewhere.

 The two reefs we dove. My favorite site was "Caves" on Norman Reef.