A Sydney Safari

So who knew only an hour or two bus ride away from the bustling city and the beauty of the Harbor Bridge and the Opera House, there was so diverse wildlife and remote attractions to see.

My Saturday in Sydney was spent on a rather unique "safari tour" that was offered through a company I found at the hotel. The first thing that made the trip unique was the ride, a photo of which you can find above and right. It was a cross between a Hummer and a shuttle bus, and it was pretty cool. What made it even better was I got to ride shot gun for the day, a "bonus" to being the only "single" traveler in the group and the last one picked up from his hotel.

The day started with a visit to a wildlife park just outside the city of Sydney. This place had loads and loads of animals, everything from koala bears, kangaroos, wambats, tasmanian devils, from crocs, exotic birds and loads of other stuff. The only bad thing about the stop was we only had an hour, I could have easily spent most of the morning there.

The day progressed to a visit to a cannon cut thru-pass where we needed the 4x4 feature on our vehicle. Not only did we do some "off roading" our guide Sam (who was fantastic), let us walk around in the national forest for a while and showed us some cool stuff that was indigenous to Australia. At the end of our walk he even busted out a didgeridoo (sp) and played it for us, and even let us try it, no one could do it right. There was a group of Asian traders in our group and they laughed at each other while they tried to do it, that was funny to see.

After the stop in the cannon we got back on the "bus" and had lunch at a wonderful botanical garden spot that overlooked the Blue Mountain pass. The mountains get their name because of the eucalyptus (sp) trees that grow in the valleys. As the gas evaporates into the atmosphere it brings a blue hugh to it.

From lunch it was off to Australia's "Grand Cannon" which was neat to see, but not anything like what we have in the U.S. This Grand Cannon is more green and flush with color, still very cool.

From there it was off to see the most famous rock formation in the area, the "Three Sisters" formation. The tales are interesting on this one, but it was well worth the stop and walk through another park.

The day ended with afternoon tea at the Olympic Village which was the site of the 2000 games. It was getting dark so I was really only able to get one good picture, but was neat to walk around where the games took place.

So having said that it was a rather busy day, and you can decide what photos you want to spend time looking at. To make it easy, I have listed the "albums" below in the next few blog entries.