Waterfalls

Waterfalls look great. Here are a few photos of waterfalls that I took in Scotland.

The series of falls here form a part of a salmon leap. The salmon leap up these falls as they travel upstream.

Nik Wallenda tightrope walk over Niagara Falls

We were lucky enough to be at Niagara Falls to see Nik Wallenda do his tightrope walk over the falls on Friday 15 June 2012. It was a very special event, and lots of people came to watch it.

Here are some of the crowds that were near us:

We had been walking all day and wanted to sit down while we waited a few hours for the walk to start, so we found a spot at the top of a grassy hill in front of an inflatable ad which we could lean our backs against.

We were also sitting right under the spot where the lights shine out on to the waterfalls, and not far from Skylon tower, which is on the right in this picture.

Here’s my photo of looking upward at the rays of light. The squiggly lines are the moths that were flying around in the lights.

Now for the tightrope walk! Here are some photos that I took (click on them to see them bigger).

Niagara Falls

I had a great couple of days at Niagara Falls. It was amazing seeing the falls for myself and I had fun doing all the touristy things with Rebekah.

Me with the falls in the background:

Here are some photos of the falls:

We went up Skylon tower and took some photos from up there:

There are two main waterfalls at Niagara which you can see in this photo. The one on the left is called the America falls, and it is on the US side of the border, and the one on the right in this photo is called Horseshoe Falls, and it connects between the US and Canada. All of the other photos in this blog post are of the Horseshoe Falls a bit closer than this photo.

One of the tourist activities we did was go for a ride on the ‘Maid of the Mist’ – a boat which goes right into the misty spray of the waterfall. You can see the boat right in the mist in this photo, just starting to turn back, as this is about as close as it goes.

Here’s me on the boat, all wrapped up in a disposable raincoat heading towards the falls:

Rebekah and I together as we head back away from the falls:

Another tourist thing we did was ‘Journey Behind the Falls’. We went down an elevator and into a tunnel behind the falls and we could hear the thundering roar of the water going down, which was pretty amazing. We could also walk right out onto a platform behind the fall, so we could get pretty wet from the spray and covered up with these yellow disposable raincoats. Here’s me looking great in my raincoat!

This is one of the spots where you could safely take a photo behind the falls without getting your camera wet. I took a video on my camera here where you can see the water going by. I will post it for you to see when I get back to Australia.

That’s all for now. Stay tuned for more happy snaps from my time at Niagara!

Today's exciting adventure!

We had a busy adventurous day today. First we hiked to a nice waterfall and then we went to a beach and went snorkelling. There is an Australian family (all adults) on holiday staying in the same unit as we are staying in on the weekends and they had the plans to do this trip and invited us to join them.

We drove to a place where we would start hiking to the waterfall. We had three local men who volunteered to be our guides. It was quite the hike! Lots of slippery rocks and tree roots. We were all so hot from hiking uphill. I wonder how this hike we did today compares with the Kokoda Trail – a lot shorter obviously, but in terms of difficulty, I'm sure it must be up there with it!

Here's a photo of us at a pretty easy part of the hike.

We were all very hot from hiking uphill so it was a relief to get to the amazing waterfall at the end of it and have a swim in the cool water.

After that we drove for an hour or so and went snorkelling at a place called East Cape and I saw lots of pretty fish. We saw a sailing canoe that had a blue tarp as its sail!

Here we are on a pier at another place.

It was a good, fun day, although now I have sore muscles from the hiking!