Road Trip!

The Great Ocean Road is one of those sights that people will scold you for not visiting if you come home without that particular experience. Stretching barely 400km, it is one of the most beautiful scenic highways in the world, and definitely one of the most beautiful parts of Australia. The best way to do it, really, is to hire a camper van with some friends and drive from Melbourne to Adelaide, stopping and sleeping wherever you like along the way. Unfortunately for me, all my friends did the Great Ocean Road while I went to Tasmania so I left on my own. On Leslie's recommendation I booked a 2-day tour with Ride Tours that left December 22nd.

Ride Tours is great because its geared towards young people, specifically backpackers. The bus picked me up at King Street Backpackers (where I stayed when I first got to Melbourne) at 7:45 am. That meant that I had to be awake at 6:00 am, which is totally unholy for a backpacker. The bus was almost full by the time I got on and there were a few more stops before we left the city. Ride Tours does the Great Ocean Road backwards, starting from the end furthest from Melbourne and going back towards the city - that way we miss all the other major tour buses, so sometimes we get entire sights completely to ourselves. On the downside, however, that means that we start day 1 with a 3 hour drive inland over flat farm country. Everyone slept for the first half, until we stopped for tea, and then sat around groggily while we drank tea. Jude, our tour guide (and also the bubbliest woman I've ever met!), took the tea break as a chance to get to know all of our names, and when we re-boarded the bus she listed off out names and where we were from. Sitting right behind me was another guy from Canada, James. We hit it off instantly and hung out for the 2 days (and several days after the tour). Almost instantly I invited him over for Christmas because he's from the same town as Nicole and I knew everyone would like him, plus he's just 18, traveling alone and for the first time, and has only been in Australia for a 1 1/2 weeks, so i figured it would be nice. Of the other 19 passengers on the bus there's 6 Italians, 2 Americans, a Scottish girl, and Irish guy, 4 Japanese, a guy from East Timor, a French girl and an Austrian girl, and 2 Germans. The oldest person is 31 and the youngest is 18, so everyone gets along pretty well.

The first day we start at Tower Hill, an ancient sunken volcano, where James and I walked around and saw wild emus, koalas, foxes and kangaroos. From there we drove to Logan's Beach to see the view (in the winter you can see whales), and then continued on down the Great Ocean Road where we saw the Bay of Islands, the Bay of Martyrs, the Grotto, and London Bridge. We spent the night in Port Campbell at the hostel and Jude made us a huge bbq (which is included in the price). I did some of the bbq-ing because Jude says she actually hates cooking. After dinner we went out to see the sunset behind the 12 Apostles. Too bad for us it was terribly overcast and we didn't see the sun set at all, but once it was dark we could see the penguins come up onto the beach to nest for the night. We didn't stay for long though because, even though its summer, the wind was so vicious that we were half frozen by the time we left. I was wearing 2 sweaters and my scarf and lent James my wind breaker because it was so brutal. The idea upon our return to the hostel was to go to the pub, but everyone wimped out except for me, James, Alison (the Scottish girl), Justin (the Irish guy), and Helena (the Austrian girl). We had a few pints and talked to a few locals (Port Campbell is a really small town and everyone knows everyone and could instantly tell we weren't from there) and then headed back to bed just after midnight.

The second day I was practically the last person out of bed out of our group. I pretty much shouldn't haven't gotten out of bed at all. The first thing I did was fall down a flight of stairs going to the washroom. The bruise didn't start coming out for 3 days and is still getting worse. Throughout the rest of the day I walked into a tree, got a soaker in the ocean, and almost fell off a rock and James had to grab my arm. It was one of those days... Anyway, we had breakfast at the hostel and then packed up to go back to the 12 Apostles to see it in a different light. For the rest of the day we saw Loch Ard Gorge and did a rainforest walk at Maits Rest. We had lunch in Apollo Bay. James and I had fish and chips with Alison and Justin - it was delicious. We also visited Bell's Beach, a lighthouse, Torquay and stopped at several lookouts along the way. We were back in Melbourne at 8 pm. I was salty and tired, but had a great time.

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Part of trip: My 6 Month Adventure!

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