Great Ocean Road

Day 275

"May it be you journey on
To light the day
When the night is overcome
You may rise to find the sun"

It's hot in Adelaide...and I love it! +32 today and forecast predicts +34 tomorrow. It's been little while since it has been this hot and I almost forgot how wonderful it is.

Last friday I went to yet another AFL game. This time it was rematch of last years Grand Final between Hawthorn and Geelong. Geelong came to this match as clear favourites since Hawthorn wasn't yet fully recovered from last year's post-season operations. Hehe thats AFL for you, usually half the players of every team have to go under the knife after season because of injuries. AFL is tough game.

Match was lot more exciting than was expected. Hawthorn battled bravely against heavier, faster, more powerful and more experienced Geelong and lost only with 7 points. Hawthorn's performance won me to their side this year...right after West Coast of course.

On Saturday morning I embarked on yet another tour. This one lasting 3 days and taking me to Adelaide through Great Ocean Road and Grampians National Park. I didn't have that big expectations since I had been reading some bad reviews about this tour but I was pleasantly surprised how much there was actually to see, and yet still after 275 days of traveling and seeing the most amazing sights in world, I was still able to be stunned by the beauty of some places.

So first day we traveled along the Great Ocean Road towards world famous 12 Apostels stopping at Koala park to see some Koalas(I wasn't too excited since I had seen many of them in wild already in Magnetic Island back in September). We also stopped on the way to do a treetop walk which basically means a walk on metal platforms which circles 40-50m above ground among treetops...pretty cool but yet again I had done one similar and more impressive one in Pemberton, Western Australia. As Sun was setting we finally got to 12 Apostels and I was literally blown away!

I had seen images before but once there...the whole sight was just breathtaking. No image was able to do justice just how big these "Apostles" actually are and how they dominate entire landscape where we were watching them, beautiful!

Back in our accomodation I had 2 shocks. First was the fact that out of 18 people in tour, I was only one who bought any alcohol from bottleshop next to our hostel. No one else had any alcohol...what the hell?! I obviously mistakenly took the AA-tour. Second shock was how frigging cold it got there during night. Temperature dropped to +2 and we had no heating and only 1 blanket each. I think I got the worst of it since I woke up to heavy cold and flu :-(

Next day we headed back to Apostles to watch sunrise and how different the place looked at morning light.

After that we moved on through the Great Ocean Road to watch it's famous sights such as London Bridge...

...and Bay Of Islands(not quite the same as in NZ)

Finally in after lunch we arrived to Grampians National Parks. Apparently this park suffered minor damage from bushfires and was still mostly closed 2 weeks ago. Luckily it was now open and we were able to do the hikes there. That afternoon we hiked to Pinnacles lookout.

As we got to our accomodation through bottleshop I was certain that I was with AA-members. No one bought any alcohol again! Not like I'm alcoholic or anything, but nothing feels better than 1-2 cold beers after 12h day hiking and sitting in bus. This time we had heaters in our rooms so didn't have to feel so cold again(but the flu was still hanging there).

Next day we did some more hikes again. First one to Balconies lookout...

...and second one to Hollow Mountain which I think was best of the bunch.

Overall, pretty nice tour. Was little disappointed about the group and their AA-mentality. We also had(again) lot of germans and they always just gongregate with themselfs and speak german all time so you never get to know them nor ever able to jump into their conversations. Luckily we had one canadian girl and one dutch girl who didn't speak german so I had atleast some people to chat with.

Adelaide...I'm puzzled about this city. It has about 890,000 residents, but when I go out to downtown there is hardly anyone there! There is explanation though...but I'll save it to next entry which I'm hopefully able to write on Sunday this week. Tomorrow morning it's yet again early wakeup call. At 6:25am bus leaves to Kangaroo Island where I will be spending 2 days. After that it's back to Adelaide, day trip to Barossa and then...heading to familiar state again :-)

PS. Oh, got call from consulate today. My new passport has arrived :-)