Sydney & Deus Ex Machina

Sorry I've taken an age to write about what I have been up to since Byron Bay, but there is a distinct lack of
wifi in hostels down in the south of Australia. After Byron we took the night Greyhound coach down to Sydney and me, Izzy and Pete met back up with Nicola and Luke. We all booked into a hostel in King's Cross, to say it wasn't the nicest hostel in the world would be generous, but it was cheap and one of the few hostels around that had enough beds for all five of us.

As it wasn't raining we thought we'd go and get all of our sight seeing down at the obvious tourist spots like the Opera House, Harbour Bridge and the Botanical Gardens.

The next day we all chipped in and hired a car (a surprisingly nice Kia Sportage to be precise) so we could drive to the Blue Mountains, or 'White Mountains' as we called them because of the cloud and fog. On the way we dropped into a shop that I've been dying to see for years, a custom motorcycle shop called Deus Ex Machina. They take classic bikes and give them a modern twist, I think they have the style down to a tee!

After I had calmed down in the Deus shop we got on our way to the Blue Mountains, which really just ended up being a picnic in the back of the car for Nicola's birthday. We took a bit of a detour home to find 'Red Hand Caves', some caves which have ancient Aboriginal artwork inside. I found getting there the most exciting bit! We had about a half hour off road drive (in our front wheel drive car) and then a 10 minute walk from the end of the road. It really felt about a million miles from any civilization, we even heard wild dingoes barking in the distance. Unfortunately my camera was too big to fit through the metal fencing to get photos of the actual artwork itself!

Singapore Zoo & Sydney

I had dragged myself out of bed to do some shopping with Izzy, Jean & Valerie, but the next day it came back with a vengeance. Unfortunately the 20th Feb was the last day we had left to go to the Zoo, so I would have to put up with feeling sick if I wanted to go. It would also be our last chance to catch up with Jean & Valerie before they go back to Thailand for the rest of their travels. I had heard so many good things about the Zoo (it's also number 1 thing to do in Singapore on TripAdvisor!) that I really didn't want to miss out. The 30 minutes on the train and 30 minutes on the bus were torture, but when I got there I wasn't so bad I just had to walk at a snail's pace. Not many good photos either I'm afraid as I was really not in the mood for it.

Just as we walked past the lion enclosure it was 'Snack Time' as they called it. One of the park rangers had a bucket of meat chunks he was throwing in for the lions while another member of staff gave a commentary. We got chatting to the guy (called Mcroy) who was throwing in the meat and he took us aorund of few of the other big cats to tell us some interesting facts (none of which I can remember!). He even fed the jaguars and leopards especially for us to watch. He must have liked us because he said it was not their feeding time, he just wanted to show them jumping into the water to find the big chunks of meat.

We left in the early afternoon as Jean & Valerie had some things to sort out before their morning flight the next day and I wanted to go back to bed as I was feeling worse by the minute. The next morning, at around 4am I woke up with a strange feeling about our flight to Sydney which was meant to be a 7:55pm that following evening. I got up to check the tickets and it turns out the flight was on the 20th Feb not the 21st Feb! We had missed our flight, and in a couple of hours would be about to miss our connecting flight to Cairns. Not sure how I made that mistake but I blame it on me being sick. The company I had booked with had a 24/7 helpline which was busy. I checked the flight prices and it was looking like it was going to cost hundreds. I got straight on the phone to Qantas and told them what had happened, and fair play they got us on a flight within 5 hours and another connecting flight within 24 hours of that... For only £99 each! Outstanding customer service!

We got straight up, packed, checked out and straight on the MRT to the Airport. The plane we were to board turned out to be the new Airbus A380! It was amazing inside, even in economy the seats have a fair amount of leg room and as the seat reclines the lower half slides forward. It was kitted out with fancy carbon fibre seat backs holding 10" (I would guess) touch screens. There was a great feature built into the screens where you could choose a camera mounted on the back of the planes tail facing forward, so you could watch take-off, flight and landing.

We landed in Sydney at about 10pm with nowhere to stay in this unplanned overnight stop. Luckily for us the travel concierge was still open and helped us find a 'cheap' hostel to stay in for the night near the train station so we could easily get back in the morning for our flight to Cairns. I don't think $105 (£65) is that cheap but it is for Sydney. I think when we revisit Sydney it will be a flying visit beacuse it is very expensive. £2 for a small 300ml bottle of water!