GOR: The Great Ocean Road!

The last two days, we have been driving the Great Ocean Road! We picked up our rental car yesterday morning, and made it out of Melbourne almost without incident (lost once, helped by construction man). We spent the morning cruising down the highway, and by lunch time were just arriving to the coast. The Great Ocean Road gets a lot of comparisons to Hwy One in California, and there are lots of similarities. The vistas were scenic, there are gorgeous cliffs and rock formations, and the weather was about 75 and breezy. We made it to our stopping place of Apollo Bay at around 4 pm, checked out the hostel (gorgeous, eco-hostel, very cool), then decided that here was a great place to make our food so we headed to the grocery store for some provisions. First we got pancake shake for brekky (that’s right, their pancake mix only comes in pitchers that you add water to and shake!), then peanut butter and nutella for sandwiches for lunch, and stuff for a beef stir-fry. We also got cookie mix to make to eat with our amazing dessert wine from the Queen Victoria Market… but those didn’t work out so well.

Today we spent the morning driving down a stretch of road where we heard there were koalas in the wild!!!! There were and it was beyond cool. We stopped every time another car stopped, and people would point them out to you, eventually we were able to spot them for ourselves. At one point, Mike even spotted one on the ground and we stopped and watched him cross the road and climb a new tree! It was incredible. Our morning was capped off by seeing a mother and joey hanging out in a tree.

Then we headed on to the road, we stopped at the Twelve Apostles, possibly the most photographed natural landmark in Oz, although there are fewer now, they occasionally fall into the ocean . We also saw London Bridge (which has fallen down, although there is still one arch, it just hasn’t been connected to the mainland in a few years) and a number of other cool sights. We capped off our day by heading to a local cheese factory where we picked up a havarti smoked with eucalyptus leaves. Then we headed back to the hostel, made pasta and watched the sunset from the roof deck with a bottle of wine. We also got invited to dessert with some lovely ladies on holiday from Melbourne (they make a mean rum/almond torte!). Tomorrow we head back to Melbourne and on to Alice Springs on Thursday.