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Published: August 6th 2007
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Wines, Olives, Cheese and Sea Lions
McLaren Vale Our morning started with a quick drive south from Adelaide to our new hotel in the McLaren Vale wine region at Maslin Beach. We arrived too early to check in but really just wanted to know where our hotel was prior to starting our day. When we arrived we hadn’t eaten yet that day so asked for a suggestion for an early lunch.
The owner suggested we head to a local winery that serves lunch on weekends. Hoffman’s Winery, which was only ten minutes away, is a small winery of only about 10 acres of grape vines which is an incredibly small amount of grapes for any vineyard. We started the afternoon with a wine tasting and took a few minutes to talk to the owner. He was incredibly friendly and his wines were great. Having a chance to talk to the actual owner of a vineyard is great because we could ask all sorts of questions about wine making and the wine business and get honest open answers. Their wines were really good, but we had already purchased a bunch of wines in Barossa so we
only bought one bottle of wine to take with us.
Lunch in the “Currant Shed” at the winery was exquisite. Kel and I shared a plate of food that was prepared from local produce from the McLaren Vale area. We had salami, honeycomb cooked eggplant, roasted red peppers, local bread and many other tasty treats from the area. When we were done with our meal we were both incredibly satisfied and ready to spend more time visiting vineyards and shops in the area.
Our first stop was yet another vineyard that imports wines into the US, Rosemount Estates Vineyards. We both tried a few wines and settled on a bottle of traditional wine which is similar to a Bordeaux mix wine. At this point we had purchased a full 6 bottles of wine (including the Jacob’s Creek bottles from back in Barossa) and had drunk none of them. We decided that we would buy no more bottles until we polished off a few.
With two new bottles of wine in our car and more than a few tastes in us we decided to move on to food. We started at a vineyard that also grows olives aptly
called the Olive Grove. We got a chance to taste multiple types of olives and a few other area delicacies and ended up with a few olives, some olive oil and some dukka, a dry spice and ground nut combination eaten with bread and olive oil that is seen throughout South Australia.
From there we jumped into McLaren Flat, a nearby town, and stopped at a cheese shop to buy some cheese. We had planned on going back to our hotel and enjoying some cheese, crackers and wine for an afternoon snack. While in town we stopped at a gourmet shop where we found some semi-dried tomatoes and some fig paste which was to be eaten with the cheese. We quickly returned to our hotel and enjoyed our snack. The fig paste with the sharp cheddar was really great and the dried tomatoes and olives rounded out the snack to make a delicious afternoon sitting on the lawn watching the sun go down.
That evening we went to a small Italian restaurant in McLaren Flat and enjoyed a light dinner due to all the chips, cheese and olives. The food was pretty good but we were not really
into it because we had eaten so much good food that day. After dinner we returned to the house and rested a bit before bed.
Kangaroo Island We spent the next morning figuring out what the week or so coming up had in store for us on our way back to Sydney. It was a bit of a damper to realize that we would have to spend at least a couple of days doing some serious driving to get back to Sydney on time to return our car. But, the good news was that we were heading towards the beauty of Kangaroo Island.
Kangaroo Island is off the coast of South Australia and is very uninhabited and contains a couple of gorgeous national parks as well as 540km of coastline. We left the hotel around 10am and took the hour drive to the ferry which carries both passengers and vehicles. The hour long wait to board wasn’t that bad but backing the car into the ferry was a bit of a nail biter considering I’m still pretty wary of driving on the right side of the car. Thankfully the people in charge of loading the ferry
gave great instructions which made parking the car a breeze.
45 minutes later we drove the 300m from our ferry to our new hotel in Penneshaw. We checked in and then headed to Kingscote 52km away to get lunch at a deli. There are only a few restaurants on Kangaroo Island so we were lucky to only drive 30 miles to find one that was open for lunch.
With lunch in our stomachs we decided to drive to Seal Bay which gives guided tours of a sea lion colony that lives on the beach. We had to drive yet another hour to Seal Bay with a distance of about 60km between Kingscote and Seal Bay. The drive was pretty easy since the roads are mostly straight. The only challenge of driving on Kangaroo Island is avoiding the large number of creatures that sometimes step out on the road. The evidence of this problem is all too relevant as you drive around the island and see all sorts of creatures that have been killed by cars.
We signed up for the 3:30pm tour of the beach and were ready when the guide came to take us down to
the sea lion colony. They only take you within about 10 yards of the sea lions but that is definitely close enough to see them up close and personal. For the most part the sea lions sleep when they are on the beach. Due to their very specific diet sea lions must work very hard for their food. They burn a ton of calories during their three day fish hunts. Once through they return to the beach for a three day siesta. For the most part the creatures lounge on the dunes and sleep the days away. In this case we were lucky enough to see a few of them moving around playing with each other and swimming a bit.
After 45 minutes of asking questions to the guide and watching the sea lions play we headed back to the parking lot to head back to the hotel. An hour and a half later we were back in the confines of the Kangaroo Island Seafront hotel. Since our hotel room contained a kitchen we decided to go out and get some groceries and enjoy a home cooked Kel Kel concoction.
Kel cooked us spaghetti and we drank some
of our wine while watching some Australian TV. It’s surprising how nice it can be to live sort of like usual. Eating dinner in front of a TV (with shows in English) is pretty close to home which was awesome. After dinner we watched some more TV and read a bit before heading to bed.
Hope you’re all well at home!
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