Kangaroo Island

Vanessa and I spent Halloween night Adelaide, we had driven almost 8 hours to get there so we didn’t go out that night, just hung out at one of the worst hostels I’ve ever stayed in. I DO NOT recommend Sunny’s Backpacker’s. The guy who checked us in gave us attitude when he couldn’t find our reservation (which eventually turned up), there was a single toilet, sink, and shower to be shared between the three rooms upstairs, a total of 24 girls. There were two shower stalls, but the fixtures had been torn out of one leaving some gaping holes in the tile. That must have been some sort of new wave decorating scheme I’m not familiar with, because there was also a giant hole in the plaster of the wall next to my bed that who knows what could have crawled through in the middle of the night. Someone had taped a poster over it, but it was all torn up. Probably by the giant radioactive spiders I kept thinking about all night while staring at the ceiling instead of sleeping…

The next morning we happily checked out of that dump and drove 2 hours down the peninsula to Cape Jervis where we would board the Sealink ferry to Kangaroo Island. I’ve never driven a car onto a boat before, so that was kind of fun. It was a quick 45 minute ride, then we grabbed the car and headed all the way west to Flinders Chase National Park. It only takes 2 hours to drive from the east coast of the island to the west. Our first stop was the Platypus Walk in the park.

Hard to believe, but this park was destroyed by a bush fire a few years ago

One of the platypus watering holes. We could see bubbles where they were hanging out under the surface.

How many platypus do you see in this picture.? Yeah, there aren't any. Apparently it's really rare to see them in the wild. I still haven't, but I really want to!

We did see this guy though! He's an echidna, kind of a fuzzy porcupine. They hunt by jamming their nose into the dirt searching for bugs.

I think they might be a little blind too, this one almost walked over my foot, never even saw us there!

Afterwards we went to the Remarkable Rocks; rock formations right on the coast that were named not-very-imaginatively back in the 1800s, like most things in Australia. I mean, they are definitely remarkable, but hadn’t these people ever seen tremors? What about Graboid Point or something? I want to petition to change it, who’s with me?

See what I mean about Tremors? Seriously, that would be way better.

More rocks...  

 

All this sightseeing is hard work. Sometimes you gotta take a break!

 

Here's all of them together. Remarkable, no?

The sun was going down at this point, and we started to get an idea of why it’s called Kangaroo Island. There are signs everywhere in Australia warning drivers that animals are out from dusk to dawn, but I’ve never seen anything like on the island, they were everywhere! I went from having seen exactly one wild kangaroo to dozens in the space of an hour, they are all over the road! Not to mention birds, wallabies, echidna, possums, pretty much everything. You have to drive really slow in the evenings.

These were more of the big ones, cool, but not cuddly.

This guy was a great model, he would turn around any time someone made a noise.

We camped at Vivonne Bay that night, sleeping in the car for the last time. Then it was up early because we still had a lot to see and this was the day we needed to drop our now filthy relocation off at the KI airport.

Early morning in Vivonne Bay

The first stop was Little Sahara, a huge group of sand dunes in the middle of the bush and weirdly far from the coast for that much sand. You can rent sandboards there, which is exactly what we did. Sandboarding is a lot like snowboarding, except you don’t need as many layers, there are no chairlifts, and it hurts SO much more when you fall. You wouldn’t think so, and it’s ok if it’s just a knee or a hand that goes down because that will sink into the sand. But when you land flat on your butt or your back, it feels like landing on concrete. We took some great bruises away from Little Sahara, and about a pound of sand between the two of us. It kept showing up for days!

It doesn't look like much, but this hill was really steep! We missed that chairlift...

The sand looked like it went on forever!

Expert sandboarder, obviously.

The sky was just incredible.

Then it was on to Seal Bay, it’s a kind of a sanctuary for Australian Sea Lions, which are really rare to see in the wild. They leave the beach to hunt for three days at a time, then come back to play in the waves and sleep on the beach for three days straight. Rough life. They even surf in the waves!

This is what a sea lion looks like when he's chattin' up a lady.

Most of them slept right through our visit

I can't think of a prettier place I'd want to sleep for a few days either!

See the one on the right? They roll in the sand to dry off after a swim.

This was a rare shot. There's sea lion yoga in the front, a pup nursing in the middle, and a surfer in the back! The only on we saw do that all day.

This guy was huge and sleeping under the walkway. Otherwise I would never have gotten this close. He was about 600lbs, according to our guide.

After Seal Bay it was time to head up to Kingscote, where we would turn in our car at the airport and stay for the night at Kangaroo Island Central Backpackers, the only hostel, before taking the ferry back the next morning.

We checked into the hostel first to drop off our stuff, because we weren’t sure how to get back from the airport, we assumed there would be a shuttle or something like that. Lucky for us, we mentioned it to one of the owners who was checking us in, because he told us that there was no way to get back from the airport. We would be stranded after turning in our keys. Luckier still, he called up the other owner, who happened to be at the airport picking up a friend, and he was nice enough to wait for us to get there so he could drive us back.

This was a night-and-day experience from our brief stay in Adelaide, and I can’t say enough good things about that hostel. It was clean and cozy, and we even had our own room with wifi! It was heaven after sleeping in the car for most of the last week.

The next day we walked down to the Kingscote pier and checked out the Pelican colony that lives there. I had never seen any up close, and I have to say those are some of the weirdest looking birds I’ve ever seen! They seem to sleep most of the time, like a lot of Australian animals, come to think of it, but when they wake up they do this incredible stretching routine that includes turning their throat pouch thing inside out with their neck… It’s seriously one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever seen.

Lots of sleepy pelicans!

Two different stretches, both pretty impressive

See the one with his face inside out? What's up with that?!

Something woke them up, but I have no idea what. It was kind of eerie, they all stood up and looked that way at once...

I loved this sign, sound familiar?

We spent the rest of the day lounging on the comfy couches in the common room and indulging in the good internet connection, something all too rare here. Our bus picked us up just after 5, brought us to the ferry, then it was another bus ride back to Adelaide. I also can’t say enough good things about the Sealink service, which covers all the busses and ferries. They are super helpful and efficient, and made planning that trip a breeze!

This is where I leave off for now, but I’m going to try and get a post about Adelaide up tonight as well.