As I said last week, I am trying to make the most of these last couple weeks. I have been focusing on getting outside and exploring some places that are a bit further away. This means I’ve spent a good chunk of time either on the train or in a car!
One of the things I have been trying to make time to see are the Figure 8 pools at the Royal National Park. After about an hour and a half on the train, my friends and I made it to Otford Station. The pools were supposed to be about an hour and a half to a two-hour hike away. So, we set off. It wasn’t until we had been walking for about an hour and a half that one of us checked the ETA on our phones, seeing that we still had an hour and a half to go. Apparently, the most frequently used trail was closed, so we had unintentionally and unknowingly doubled the hike. Most of the trail was paved or had a sort of boardwalk structure along the way. About thirty minutes from the pools, the trail ended, and the path became a beach, followed by giant rocks that required climbing. This was, honestly, my favorite part of the hike. Climbing the rocks was fun and made the experience seem more like an adventure. Finally, after much longer than anticipated, we made it to the pools. Contrary to the name, there is only one Figure 8 pool, but there are a bunch of other pools to explore. The water was quite cold and refreshing after the long journey. We stayed for a bit, eating our packed lunch and swimming, before setting off back.
The way back was absolutely brutal. Entirely uphill, it was definitely a workout. It was also very hard for us to make our way back home, considering the usual trail was closed. We knew we did not want to hike another three hours. We decided to hike halfway and then order an Uber to the train station. To our surprise, there were no Ubers running to the park. We weighed our options, recognizing that we all had no water left and no motivation to hike the rest of the way. We ended up befriending a French couple who offered to drive us to the station. At the end of the day, we had walked about eight miles in total!
Later in the weekend, my friends and I rented a car for a day trip to Port Stephens, almost a three-hour drive from Sydney. Our first stop was a spot that specializes in caring for sharks and stingrays. We had the opportunity to feed both and even get in the water to pet them! We then made our way to a sand dune, where we were able to sandboard down hills. Almost like snowboarding, we were given these tiny boards to either sit on or stand on to go down the hill. It was really fun, despite the amount of sand we were covered in by the end. Our car definitely also saw a good amount of sand. After that, we were exhausted and made our way to grab some dinner. We stopped in a cute little town and ate some really good Thai food. We ended dinner a bit early to go to watch the sunset—one of the prettiest I have seen since being here! To end the night before the drive home, we stopped for dessert!
