When we were flying over Adelaide making our decent, I seriously thought I was landing in Hawaii or something. And I've been to Hawaii, and I know what it looks like, but seriously, like take away the thicker trees here and replace with palm trees, and it's the same place. The landing part, at least. And the airport is by the beach. So, maybe a bit off. The airport is super new: actually nicest airport I've ever been in, and I've been in a lot of airports. K, maybe 2nd nicest, after KLIA, but that place is huge. Anyways, I get out and I finally get the Aussieland weather I've been looking for! Success! Drag by bags on a bus and head downtown towards Patrick's workplace. I drop my bags and he has epic print outs for me of all the places I should go to today while he is at work, starting with the beach! Hurray! And it's one straight tram to the last stop, so I can't get lost! Double hurray!
I get on the right tram and head straight to Glenelg, the cutest beach town ever. On the way, pass Caruso's fruits & veggies, and am all, fml must get back there to take picture before leaving (which obvs I do). The tram stops like right in front of the jetty, and you can see out to Antarctica (haha slash that's a lie, but you see towards Antarctica!). And honestly the water is so clear and blue, it's amazing (check the pics of my shadow in the water as I stand on the jetty - pretty sick!). So I take a walk on the beach before hitting up the local museum, where I learned all about the founding of South Australia and of Glenelg. It's a super interactive museum in the Town Hall, and super cute. Slowly head up the main street (Jetty Road, I think?) and get to what I think is the ONLY wireless hotspot with free internet in all of Australia (everywhere else charges!) AND I eat the best banana pancakes of my life before Passover starts that night. Epic success? I think so!
Anyways, I have to go meet Patrick in Chinatown for lunch, so I get back on the tram and head towards the city to meet up with Patrick and co-worker, and go through a series of underground malls to get to underground Chinatown food court. Seriously - do they need underground malls here? Like, it's not that it gets so cold and icy that people don't walk above ground.... lol oh well, either way, it was a super intense food court, with fairly decent Chinese/ Asian food. Patrick ate eel, and I judged him, and his co-worker ate lemon-glazed chicken (or something white-Asian), and I judged him more, but didn't judge out loud haha. After dropping them back at work, I hit up a historical walk of the city, and went by the Adelaide Arcade, the University of Adelaide, several art galleries, a war memorial, Government House, Old and New Parliament, the oldest Church in Adelaide, the oldest apartment block in Adelaide, and other fun buildings! Then went back to meet Patrick at 3:15 or so, as meeting time was 3:00pm, only to discover that it was not, in fact, 3:15, but 2:45, as Adelaide has special 30min time zone, ie: Adelaide IS Newfoundland.
Anyways, finally we leave his work and take bus into the boons to a parking lot, pick up Patrick's car and hit up Woolworth's for groceries to get some kosher for Passover food/ spreads to go with my matzah. Gluten-free is my new friend, as there are no Jews in Adelaide, so no real kosher for Passover food. Have I mentioned how expensive food is in Australia? It's ridonculous!! Like triple what we pay, not only for fresh food, but for boxed food too. And don't get me started on the $4.00 - $8.00 boxes of frozen meals! So we are driving to his place and fml I think I am going to die as he is driving super fast and it is super curvy road, and then we see my first kangaroo! Slash it went away really fast, so no pictures of kangaroos until Kangaroo Island, the next day. Then we go by a One Tree Hill sign and I'm all, OMG THERE IS A ONE TREE HILL!!! Apparently the show was not so successful in Aussieland. We took picture of the sign in front of the town on the way back from Kangaroo Island though for my OTH enthusiast friends (you know who you are). Finally get to Patrick's house, and holy shitson it's on a giant piece of land and there are animals everywhere slash they grow food everywhere! It's super crazy! They have 2 peacocks that just chill and walk around all day, and chickens that lay eggs and also make more chickens, and fruit trees and herbs AND their water tanks are filled with rain water! Because that's how they get water here! Crazy!
So Patrick's mom was super cute and went reading up on Passover and went through Jewish cookbooks to try to find recipes to cook up for the first dinner! We had an epic feast and it was a great success. 5 days in, and I have pretty much kept Passover as well as I do back in Montreal, so yay me! Slash also yay Patrick's mom who always tries to make sure she is making something kosher for me to eat :)
The next morning we woke up at 3:30am because we had a 2h 30min drive to Cape Jarvis to catch our ferry to Kangaroo Island. By the time we got to the ferry, the sun was just rising, and everything was so pretty. We got on the ferry and after 45 mins we reached land. I don't know why, but for some reason I was expecting to see Kangaroos running slash jumping freely around the island from a distance, but alas, that's not the way it works. We got in at like 7:15am, which meant we had 5 hours until we would be allowed to check in. This meant tourist time! We hit up the information centre for a map (which we could not find until a few stops after, but oh well), and then drove to our first tourist destination, Cape Willoughby, with its super famous lighthouse. Slash also made tiny stop at camping ground to check out the view along the way, and might have had re-occuring flashback to that Criminal Minds episode with the crazy guy who ate people, so had to leave. Saw sooooooo much roadkill along the way, it's ridiculous. I think we must have seen 3 or 4 dead kangaroos by the time we got to the cape (it's all dirt road, so I guess they think it's safe to cross, but it's not). I was getting worried that I wouldn't see a live one by the end of the day! Got to the light house, but it was closed! Tried to break in, and go around the fence, but by the time we got back to the front, it was open! Success! So we go in and pay the $2 to get a self-guided tour, only to realize that the self-guided tour does not include entry INTO the lighthouse itself! Fail! So we read the papers they give us, learn about all the fun stories about the lighthouse, and then go on a longer walk around the lighthouse (getting more bang for our buck) and read more about how everything worked back in the day. And then, on our way back up to the lighthouse.... I SAW MY FIRST LIVE KANGAROO!!!!!!! (slash second, but first on the island, and took first pic!) And to make the story more exciting, the kangaroo started walking away from us... TOWARDS ITS FAMILY OF 2 MORE KANGAROOS!!!!! AHHHHHHH epic success!!!!! Took lots of pics and then went back to the lighthouse, returned the guide papers, and left for Seal Bay.
Get to Seal Bay and it's like money-making centre. Seriously. You can pay either to just go on the boardwalk, or to go on the boardwalk and a guided tour along the beach. Since there is time before the next tour, we hit up the boardwalk (where there are no seals, and you cannot really see seals). On the walk though, you can see this giant skeleton of a baby humpback whale that had been beached many years back (so sad). We head back up to the tourist centre to wait for our tour, and then go down to the beach to meet our tour guide, aka Steve Irwin, who loves the seals and gets mad if you get too close slash ask stupid questions. Stay on the beach forever watching mother seals teach pups to hunt in the water, seals playing, seals swimming, seals fighting, and giant group fighting, seals sleeping slash tanning, and other fun stuff. After a while, Steve Irwin decides it's time to head back, and we leave, spotting more hidden seals along the way, including one on the path to the tour centre, and then go to find our hostel.
We get to the hostel and there is no one there, but there is an envelope with our names and keys inside, and so we go to our room, which we expected would be a double, but instead was a giant room for 7... ALL TO OURSELVES!!! Success!!! Take epic nap until dinner, then hit up FISH, a (you guessed it) fish take-out restaurant run by a cranky woman who makes good fish but gives small portions. Had super yummy fish with salad, went to look for penguins, saw none, and so went back to hostel. Later in the night, head back out to find penguins, and instead come across a shitton of wallabies!!! WOOT! They are like mini-kangaroos, and super cool. Broke into the penguin reserve and went around with flashlights and saw 3 real Australian penguins! Success! They are more furry than Antarctic penguins, I think. Went back to hostel all happy for the night.
Next morning was epic tourist day, hitting up the west side of the island, starting with Little Sahara, this super cool desert with huge sand dunes that people surf board on!!! Had difficulty climbing it (check the pics haha) but finally made it up. Made friends with a French couple trying to surf board, and then went back down the hill, filling my shoes with sand in the process. Next stop: Kelly Caves. So the story is that this guy was riding his horse Kelly one day, and they both fall into this pit (cave entrance). He tries to get Kelly out of the cave, but can't, so goes to get help, but when he comes back, Kelly is gone! Kelly is never seen again, but people think he must have found another cave entrance or something and perhaps got out. The caves are super cool though, because it's all crystal, and over the past hundreds and thousands of years, the ground has shifted, and so some stalagmites and stalagtites (sp.?) that had met later were cut off from each other. There are also lots of cool formations, like the super cool ballet slipper. Then the tour guide took us further into the caves and showed us what it was like for explorers who went down into the caves back when they went around it with just a candle. And then she got someone to blow it out to show us what it would look like once your candle burnt out. And then I got scared. Until the lights went back on. FML.
After a short walk outside and discovering other cave entrances, we went towards Flinders Chase National Park, home to Remarkable Rocks and Admiral's Arch (tell me you saw those pics, because they are crazy!!!) On the way, we stopped at a koala preservation area, and saw a whole bunch of super cute koalas, including a baby koala that was super close up!!! Epic success! We also saw a kangaroo and wallaby at the same place, so extra success! Seriously though, koalas are the cutest things ever, though apparently people who live on the island are not so pleased with them because they eat so much and do not so much, and apparently they want to go killing some off! WTF!!! I think we should get Paul McCartney to leave us alone about the seal hunt and go check out the problems in Australia, man!!! Slash have I mentioned that they eat kangaroo here?!
So back to Remarkable Rocks and Admiral's Arch. CRAZY PLACES. I mean, CRAZY. AMAZING. INCREDIBLE. REMARKABLE. Like, holy shit son. These rocks are all granite and have been shaped by wind and the ice age and they are super intense cool. And so much fun. It's like a park for adults because we get to climb the rocks to take super cool pictures. And ignore Anthony's comments on my pics - there were no ladders involved and no photoshopping! Admiral's Arch was also super cool, because we got to see New Zealand fur seals as well as this super cool archway. The entire area smells bad because of the seal poo mixing with the rock, but it's so pretty that you (almost) forget about the smell. Plus the seals are just so cute play-fighting under the arch. Then we went back to the Flinders Chase visitors centre where we decided to do the walk to the platypus watering hole so that I could see my first platypus, but instead of seeing platypi (they were in hiding), we saw echidnas (kind of like porcupines) and ugly Aussieland geese and lots of dead trees, some with new ones growing through them! So there is some re-growth after the bush fires.
So after that super long day we decide to head back to the hostel for some dinner and make successful stir-fry with gluten-free noodles before crashing for the night. The next day is our last, and we still have to climb Prospect Hill and see the capital, Kingscote! So the next morning we hit up those two places, doing a little historic drive around Kingscote and stopping at a couple of arts and crafts galleries, before heading back to the ferry for our ride home.
Oh, right. Btw. Did I mention that as soon as I got off the ferry when we first got to Kangaroo Island my camera DIED?! Ya. Because it did. So thank goodness Patrick had a camera, but holy shit man I flipped the lid!
Right, so back to Adelaide Hills we went, stopping at OTH for the epic picture, and then finally reaching home. Chilled that night, watching some Aussieland television by the same guy from Summer Heights High (some show about trying to find Australian of the Year) and then called it a day.
So I know I still have to blog about my past 2 days, which include trip around wine country and trip to the zoo/ chocolate factory/ biggest rocking horse in the world, but I am le tired from writing and this post has been long enough! So enjoy this post and I will get back to you soon!
Miss you all,
xoxo Kat
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