An Island of Kangaroos and much, much more!

Greetings from Alice Springs, known best as the gateway to the Outback. But more about that later!

Still loving reading all of the comments! Thanks for reading along all! AJ and I were up bright and early on Saturday waiting to catch our bus down to Port Jervis, which is where you catch the ferry over to Kangaroo Island. It was about a two hour drive (including additional stops to pick up passengers), so we slept most of the way. And once on the ferry, we nabbed great seats at the front of the vessel so that we could enjoy the view of the 45-minute crossing to the island. It was a beautiful day on the water and it was smooth sailing the entire way. When we pulled into port in Penneshaw, we jumped off and located the Adventure Tours bus and our tour guide Glenn.

Within a few minutes, the other seven folks joining us on the trip joined us, and we were on our way for two days on KI. And before I go into detail about our time on the island, let me give you some info on Glenn.

Glenn is a former sheep farmer and lifetime resident of Kangaroo Island, as is his father and grandfather. He and his wife live on the island, but his three grown children all live on mainland Australia now. After spending most of his life farming sheep, once all of his children decided that none of them wanted to continue the tradition of farming, he decided to sell the farm and get into tourism. Now he does tours on the island for a myriad of tour groups.

So, we had a number of stops along the island. On the first day, we were scheduled to check out a few of the beaches, walk along Seal Bay, sandboard at Little Sahara and stop by a koala farm before heading to our accommodations. We had lunch at Antechetum Beach along a river. It was beautiful and very secluded. There was no one around! And on our way to Seal Bay, we got to see more of the beautiful coastline. Everywhere we looked, there was something incredible to look at. At Seal Bay, we were able to walk down to the beach where the sea lions live. Though we had to keep a safe distance from them (approximately 10 meters), we were very close. Because the breeding season had just finished, there were lots of new cubs walking about with their mothers. They were so cute!

At Little Sahara, Glenn pulled out the snowboards and up we walked the large sand hill to the top. There, we waxed the boards, sat down and slid our way to the bottom. I definitely was a bit nervous to try at first (not because of anything other than making a fool of myself), but after some coaxing (harassing) from AJ, down I went. Unfortunately, I didn't make it down too far before rolling over in the sand. And even more unfortunate, AJ got it all on video. Lovely! So, I hung my head and walked back up the hill. On my next trip down, I was determined to go farther, so I held on tight and tried desperately to keep the board going straight. Though I did make it farther, this time when I flipped over, my left arm bent in an unnatural way and I worried for a minute that I might have injured it badly. That's when I decided to retire for the day. However, I'm now convinced that I would have succeeded if I had just kept trying. A good lesson for the future!

Our last stop was at a farm that happens to have many trees that koalas love, so we headed to the farm to check them out. Though we got some great shots of kangaroos playing at dusk, it was too dark by that time to see any koalas in the trees. So we headed off to the accommodations with the promise of returning to the farm the next day.

Our accommodations were nice little dorm rooms surrounding the kitchen area. Each room, full of bunk beds, also had it's own toilet and shower. The catch...they were outside. It was pretty cold by this time, so there was no way I was undressing in the cold to step foot in the shower...peeing outside was tough enough! We had a great barbecue dinner, followed by some time by the fire. Afterwards, Glenn took us on a walk around the farmland. The sky was so bright with stars that we were able to see the entire Milky Way Galaxy and the Southern Cross! Both were magnificent sights! And when we turned the flashlights on, we realized that we were within ten feet of a bunch of kangaroos. We were surrounded by them. And since AJ has formed this idea that kangaroos are untrustworthy animals that are out to get him, he was a bit freaked out by their presence.

Before heading to bed, AJ and I had some good laughs about our day and some of the funny interactions with some of our co-travelers. First, there is Trine, a very aggressive woman from Denmark. Every time someone said something, she responded with how they were wrong or how she's done it better. There was Marie and Peter, a young couple from Germany. Marie has been traveling through Australia for eight months while applying to University, and Peter has just joined her for two weeks to visit. Adi, a young guy from Israel, just finished his six-year commitment to the Israeli army and is traveling before trying to find work. After Australia, he's headed to the US for two months and very excited about it! Kwon, a young Korean woman, is here for two weeks by herself, and feeling extremely lonely and homesick. Then, there were two other Korean women, both living in Australia for a while, but didn't speak very good English, and therefore kept to themselves mainly. At one point, AJ said, "we're like an advertisement for The Real World.

The next day, we headed out early to enter into Flinders National Park and check out some of the sights, including the Remarkable Rocks. This set of granite rocks are truly beautiful and provide endless photo opportunities. After some more time around the national park, we headed back to the koalas, where we got some incredible shots of the furry little guys. Damn, they're cute!

We spent the rest of the day checking out other corners of the island and seeing all of its stunning beauty. By the end, we were incredibly tired and ready to jump on the ferry and bus back to Adelaide.

After a small little glitch with our hostel, we got settled back in to Backpack Oz for the night before getting up to pack and jump in a taxi to the airport. Our flight to Alice Springs was very smooth and when we landed, we realized how in the middle of nowhere we are. Once we got to our next hostel, Alice Lodge Backpackers, we took the five minute walk to "downtown." I use that word loosely since there's basically one block of shops and restaurants. Fortunately, we're only here for the night because we leave at 6 am for our tour to the Red Centre. Three days in the Outbook, sleeping on swags and hopefully not freezing!

So, now I'm off to repack our bags so that we can leave the majority of our stuff here while we're on the tour. And when we're back, we're headed off to Cairns! So much fun left to have!