December Holiday Destinations – Blue Mountains, New South Wales, Australia
Blue mountains
The Blue Mountains of New South Wales, Australia are so named thanks to the blueish tinted mist which engulfs them. The mist is a result of the lush eucalyptus forests which populate the range of mountains, but the forests are just one of the many things that attract visitors to this part of the globe.
The Blue Mountains range is a great place for beautiful scenery, cliffs and gorges which are practically asking to be explored by the more intrepid and of course hiking through the forests and peaks is always an option.
This is definitely a destination which caters more to those individuals who are a bit adventurous, or who just want a more active holiday in an exotic place.
Considering the extreme natural beauty of the place, it should come as no surprise that this is a great place for one to seek that type of adventure, and that the government of Australia saw it fit to create several National Parks in the area, three to be exact, in order to protect it for generations to come.
The three parks are: the Blue Mountains National Park, the Wollemi National Park and the Kanagra-Boyd National Park.
All of them are accessible from Katoomba, which is the main accommodation center in the region. This is a bit of an unconventional town, as you’ll surely notice when you get there, because despite it seeing a large number of visitors on a constant basis, it is still a small town with a particular type of atmosphere featuring Art Deco and Art Nouveau guest-houses, it’s truly something interesting in itself.
The Wollemi National park is the largest of the Blue Mountains National Park, and believe it or not there are still large parts of it that are unexplored.
The Blue Mountain National Park is probably the most popular of the three as it is the most accessible and the fact that it features wonderful scenery, waterfalls, Aboriginal stencils and bushwalks help with its popularity.
The third park, the Kanagra-Boyd National Park features limestone caves and the breathtaking Kangara Walls Plateau, the breathtaking aspect comes into play when you see that the plateau is actually surrounded by sheer cliffs; as for the the Jenolan Caves, these are the best-known limestone caves in the region and there are still many of them that haven’t been explored yet.
You cannot leave the Blue Mountains region however until you see the Three Sisters, a wonderful rock formation set in a gorge, the astounding thing about it being that the colors of the rock vary with the position of the sun.
The Blue Mountains are a great place to visit regardless of the time of year that you choose to do it in.
