November 6, 2010

Melbourne Cup wasn’t that great. I walked out to Federation Park in the rain, got there, watched the race on the side of the building, sat there for a few, and then headed back to the hostel. I was fairly tired and exhausted the entire time I was there, so going out didn't seem that appealing. Plus, everyone in my room spoke another language so I didn't manage to make any friends in my room to go out with. I’m on the bus now for the outback tour. I got into Adelaide from my Great Ocean Road tour last night. They picked me up early Thursday and I got back Friday night. Our bus was full but most people were my age, so that was nice. I made good friends with two girls straight away; Adele and Fransy. From Ireland and Germany. Both were such sweet girls and so funny and adventurous. Seemed like everyone was just arriving in the country, so I was pretty much the most experienced traveler. Watching everyone fumble in bags for so long was entertaining.. I had a backpack and could grab stuff out of it real quick. This morning, I had everything set out so I had to pack up my charging computer and drying towels, zip up my bag and I was out of my room within three minutes without waking my roommate. GOR was a pretty good time though. The first day was pretty cold and cloudy, but we didn’t get much rain; a little, but not as bad as it could have been. We stopped at Bells Beach, which wasn’t all that impressive because the waves were fairly small. It's meant to be some insane surf beach and since I just "learned" how to surf, I appreciate surfing so much more so I really wanted to see some insane surfers. Then we drove along GOR for a ways. We made this random stop to find koalas and feed birds. That was so awesome! These beautiful wild birds, red, blue, green and gorgeous would fly all over me to get food out of my hands. I probably ran back to get more seeds from Dave (driver) more than anyone. I’ve seen and held koalas, so I wasn’t too thrilled about that, but having birds swarm me was awesome. I felt like that creepy lady in the park from Home Alone 2 or Ace Ventura. I kept trying to pet them with no success. They pulled away every time. We did spot a few koala’s so I got some pics of them... good time. Then we stopped and took a rainforest walk, which reminded me of any other rainforest walk I’ve ever done, but colder and rainy. From there we went to the Twelve Apostles. It was much better than I expected. I guess I didn’t expect it to be so big or span so far, but the whole coast there was incredible. They were just giant cliffs with huge rocks off the coast, but so beautiful. Would have been more intense with crystal blue waters and sunshine, but still insane. We stopped at another part of the cliffs where there was a cave. Guess the story is that there was some shipwreck and a man and woman survived and washed up at this cave and stayed there for a while before being rescued or something. Maybe one was injured and the other nursed them back to health. Apparently the media had a field day with it and he was found to be some hero and fell in love with the girl but she didn’t feel the same way. Poor guy. Anyway, we climbed down some steps, along the beach, around some rock, and into the cave. It was a cool little adventure. Caves are pretty awesome to me… especially ones with a story, so I was thrilled for that walk. I took a few cool pics in there, and then we went off for dinner at a Thai place, and back to camp. Since everyone was fairly new to the country, no one had seen a kangaroo and was really excited about it. The whole drive back we listened to fairly good music, Dave has good tase, and looked for kangaroos. Every time one crossed the road everyone squealed and usually they didn’t see anything. Eventually when we got to town Dave stopped at a field that was usually guaranteed to have kangaroos. Spotted a few there, and went back to the hostel. I didn’t really sleep well the night before so I pretty much went to bed straight away. Actually, I watched an episode of True Blood first, and then went to sleep (just started it, kind of loving it). Next morning we took a quick walk back to that field to spot more roos. I had seen millions since I’ve been here, but haven’t managed to get many pics so I took heaps. We got really close and my zoom is excellent so we did well. Grampians this morning and that is basically mountains, waterfalls and cliffs. Huge walk to the base of a waterfall, McKenzie Falls. It was 300 steps down, which was fine, but getting back up was a doozy. The waterfall was incredible. I took a bunch of pics and Fransy and I wandered around a bit, climbed a few big rocks before having to make the journey back up. From there we made a few stops to different lookouts. Today was so much nicer. There were a few clouds, but the sun peaked out quite a bit, so we managed to have a clear, sunny view off the lookout. A few lookouts overlooked more mountains and others overlooked fields and towns. The final lookout was of a valley between two small mountain ranges and a town between with a lake at one end. Basically that town is screwed in a flood or an invasion; water on one end and mountains on two other ends, but really pretty to look at! We made a quick lunch stop and were dropped off at a train station. Most of the group was headed back to Melbourne, but Fransy, Adele and I were going on to Adelaide, so we got to take a 7hr bus ride together. The bus made a couple long stops, which I didn’t really think was necessary, but oh well. Adelaide is in a different time zone, but it’s only a half hour behind, which I find so bizarre. I didn’t know timezones could be half hour difference! It will be confusing for calculating time back home. Only have a few days left though before going home. I’m not buying more credit for my phone; I have heaps of free minutes and texts, so any local calls should be okay… hopefully. That just means no international messages to home or FB checks on my phone. Can’t believe I go home in 9 days. UGH!