Well, my week in Adelaide is now finished and tomorrow morning (in about 8 hours), I'm flying to Alice Springs to start my Northern Territory adventure. From there, it's up to Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef.

 

Just a quick recap of my last 9 days. After Melbourne, I drove along the Great Ocean Road with Brenda. We had a really good time getting to know each other and seeing all the scenery. Both of us were pretty good with our driving skills as well so I guess that was a good thing. AT times, it's a bit of a treacherous drive cause you are pretty much going along a cliff but the views are breathtaking especially for the passenger. And, since it's right side drive here - and we were driving west, the passenger always had a great view. The first stop along the way (actually before the Great Ocean Road) was Bell's Beach. That's the place where the last scene in Point Break was supposedly filmed (where Patrick Swayze goes to surf the 50-Year-Storm, a weather pattern that yields 200-ft high waves). There was a Rip Curl surfing competition going on but I think we just missed it. We stopped in Apollo Bay for a music festival. I was quite amused b/c tourist operators in Melbourne were making me think this was some huge festival with road closures, etc like Live 8 or Woodstock or something. Turns out that it was pretty rinky-dink but all the people in town were pretty excited. The 12 Apostles (actually there are only 7 of them now) were a pretty cool site so that was nice to see them. We spent the night in Port Fairy at a really nice B&B and had dinner at this local seafood restaurant. Brenda and I shared the Captain's Choice - $90 of seafood goodness (prawns, oysters, calamari, fish and chips, bugs, scallops and salad). It was A LOT of food but in retrospect, probably not a wise $90 spent. In any case, we enjoyed it and pretty much rolled back to our room tired and drunk.

 

Sunday morning came and after a nice breakfast in our room overlooking the bay and the sound of the crashing water on the beach, we started the drive for Adelaide with a stop in Mount Gambier for lunch. This drive was less scenic although by mid-afternoon, we did end up going through the Coonawara Wine Region and we passed Wolf Blass, Lindemens and some other vineyards.

 

We arrived in Adelaide at my uncle's place that night and hung out with the family before hitting the sac. The next day, we had to get up really early to catch a cab into the city for our bus tour to Kangaroo island. At 6:15 am, we sat waiting for the cab driver. No sign of him. My uncle got up and we were a little frantic trying to figure out what was going on. Turns out that there is a 30 minute time differnece b/w South Australia (the state Adelaide is in) and the Eastern states (Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria). So, we were actually early by 30 minutes. Actually, we had lost out on 30 minutes of sleep - that's the other way to look at it.

 

Kangaroo Island was a pleasant surprise and it was really great cause we saw a lot of wildlife including kangaroos (if we didn't see those, that would have just been silly), koalas, seals and even little penguins that do this march from the beach to their home every night at dusk.

 

The rest of my week in Adelaide was quite relaxing with my uncle's family. It was definitely nice to just chill here for a few days and enjoy the luxuries at this beautiful house. I had a lot of fun and it was great to spend time with family.

 

Now, the rest of my journey begins...

Wish me luck.