4/17/10 (katoomba)

Jenolan Caves from Annie Lin on Vimeo.

Katoomba – Jenolan Caves

The weather report yesterday said there was a chance of showers today but it turned out to be a beautiful sunny day. I guess it’s hard to give accurate weather reports in the mountains since it can change so quickly. Jon decided that he wanted to go back to Echo Point to capture a sunrise time-lapse so he woke up around 5am and drove the camper with me still in the back sleeping. That’s what so nice about having a camper…I can sleep while Jon is driving though I have to admit it was very bumpy but luckily it was a short ride. I woke up to the sun already shining and went to meet Jon but he was already on his way back to the car. He made quite a few friends in the early morning. One of them even checked out our blog and commented on it. Three were three French Canadian who worked on the airbase nearby fixing fighter planes that we have seen fly over us while we were driving.

After breakfast we decided to drive to Jenolan Caves, which were about an hour or so away. The caves were supposed to be quite spectacular with several cave tours to choose from. When we reached our destination we drove through a huge cave, which was really cool. There is only one hotel and one restaurant as it was built specifically for the people visiting the caves. We decided on the river tour, which we found out later doesn’t have a river in it. I wonder why they gave it that name. Our guide, Ian Dive, was probably in his late 60’s and had very extensive knowledge of the caves. We saw incredible limestone formations that were so shiny that I was very tempted to touch them. But of course, they ask that people don’t touch anything since our hands will leave a type of oil that will corrode the caves. The river cave consisted of approximately 2000 steps and there were parts where we had to climb up or down a ladder and after a while you left like you were going in circles. Some areas of the caves were enormous while others you really had to squeeze through. It was really different from the caves Jon and I explored in Karamea since this one was well lit and there were about 15 other people on the tour. Our tour was supposed to last about 2 hours but it ended up taking us about 2.5 hours. We must be slow walkers. By the time we finished the parking lost was practically empty.

One of the things we really wanted was to include other people on our video blog so I asked Ian if he wouldn’t mind being on camera. We asked him a few questions about himself and the caves, which you will see on the video. Jon did a quick video edit to include some of the video we took in the caves, which consisted of me holding a camera in front of us as if someone was taping us. It was a fun way for us to capture the experience.

We decided to drive back to Katoomba and stay at the same campsite since there wasn’t much else around Jenolan Caves. Overall, it was a really good day and we were pretty exhausted after our cave tour.