Adelaide, a Special Reunion, and More! (Australia)

We arrived into Adelaide the evening after leaving Perth and Margaret River.  This part of the trip was pretty special, because Clint lives there…remember Clint?  He is a friend of Jared’s from the Marines, and actually travelled with us initially when we drove from Texas.  He separated from us in Guatemala, and had always planned on attending school in Australia this year.  Jared and Clint are BFFs (not my word), so Jared was like a little school girl…in his own way, basically meaning when I asked how excited he was about seeing Clint, he shrugged and said “yea, pretty excited”.  Whatever Jared!  I could tell he was brimming with excitement below the surface.

We arrived on a Saturday night, pretty late and didn’t actually get to Clint’s place until around 11pm.  We immediately took over his living room with our massive amount of stuff and after a few minutes of quick catch up, hopped in the shower!!  Oh Lord, it had been days since a shower; I didn’t mention grabbing showers in Margaret River…because we didn’t take any :/  Anyway, we finally got a good shower in and were able to catch up with Clint.  He is studying his second year (I believe) at University of Southern Australia.  He liked his life in Australia, but said it’s been a bit difficult to break into normal living here.  School has been going alright, a job has been very difficult to find, he volunteers at a mental health facility for Aboriginals, and is really into Yoga!  So that’s basically the Clint run down.  We did nothing but chat that evening, which was nice.

The next morning, Jared and I threw some much needed laundry in, while Clint went to yoga.  We then, take a guess…headed to the grocery store.  Clint was shocked at our cheapness, noting that there was a close grocery store that was a little more expensive than our standard Coles, but Coles was about a 30 minute walk one way; we went with the Coles walk.  We hung around being lazy and getting some menial to-do’s done, and spending some quality time with Clint.  As the evening came, Jared and Clint decided to have some man-time playing Basketball, or more accurately HORSE.  I stayed back doing Blog homework for you all, and also just because I wanted the two of them to get some one-on-one time as boys.  Clint took us out to a bar that night in town, and we spent a few hours throwing back beers and hanging before calling it a night.

The next morning, Jared and I were heading to Flinder’s Ranges, a mountain range about five hours north of Adelaide with some good hiking.  I think I initially booked our rental car to leave at the crack of dawn, but we decided not to stress too much on our departure time, so I didn’t actually pick up the car until about four hours after I was expected, which didn’t get us into Flinder’s until dark.  I had originally planned to be in the mountains for two full days and two half days (including the arrival date), but Jared wanted to spend a bit more time in Adelaide with Clint, so we adjusted a few things.  When we arrived at our camp site in the national park, we set up shop and tried to prep some dinner.  Unfortunately, we had started our dinner prep work pretty late.  I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned yet, but we discovered a way to “cook” pasta without a microwave or stovetop; basically, if you just leave pasta soaking in water, it will eventually soak up the water and become soft.  It’s always a bit soggier than cooking pasta, and I can’t figure out how to make it “al dente”, but it serves well enough for us.  The main difference is that soaking pasta can take several hours, and we had forgotten to prep the pasta until we arrived at the camp.  No problem; we played our Scopa and waited around in the camp picnic area until we were totally overrun, not once but twice by a huge tour group and then a group of school girls.  Ug, lord, I forgot to mention the school groups!  There were two really big groups of high school girls on holiday, and as you would expect they were as loud as school girls can be when let out in the wild…literally.  It was a few hours before things settled down and by that time, I was basically too annoyed and tired and cold to care about eating, so I nestled up in my sleeping bag and tried to reach my crappy sleep state.
The next morning, we decided on a hike up to the tallest peak in the range.  Clearly, this range was not the highest; the ascent only took us a touch over two hours, but the walk itself was really nice through Australian bush.  Toward the end, the climb became much more arduous, which we enjoyed.  The top was nicely deserted, and quite chilly.  We had a bit of a snack while taking in the views and snapping photos, before we packed up our food and headed back down.  We decided to take a longer route going back to the campground, which led us through the “pound”.  The area was called Wilpena Pound, and basically was a mountain range connecting in a circular shape, making the center similar to a bowl, but I have no idea why it’s called a pound.  Anyway, we walked through this bowl, getting to see emus and wallabies and wildflowers.  By the end, we were both pretty tired after about a seven hour walk.  We made it back to the campsite with a bit of light left.  Jared wanted to try to get a head start on making it back to Adelaide, so he could have a bit more time with Clint, and I wanted to take a quick shower, as I knew we’d be sleeping in the car again that night.  Unfortunately, the stinking school group had made a huge line to use the showers, so I ended up having to forego cleaning up.  We had a bit of a snack before piling back into the car and starting the drive.  We watched as the sun went down over the mountains, and made one of the prettier sunsets we’ve seen.  I really hate driving through the outback around dusk and at night, due to the one kangaroo near-miss we had, so not long after it was dark, we pulled into a one road town, and parked it for the night.  We had our dinner and watched a quick movie before trying to get another restless night’s sleep.
The next morning, crack of dawn, we woke up and started making the last leg to Adelaide.  About an hour outside of the city, we made a small detour into the Barossa valley, known for its vineyards, and stopped for a wine tasting.  The region was known for its Shiraz, which was very unlike Shiraz that we are used to in the US, and much more robust, deep, and flavorful, which was nice to try.  The highlight was a $235 bottle we got to try.  At the end, we headed back into the city of Adelaide and Clint’s place.  We arrived around noon, and exploded all over Clint’s living room again.  After settling in, I set out to return the rental car, and run some legal errand (yes, I am taking legal routes to try to get the money back that my former boss owes me; unlikely to be effective in terms of actually getting any money back, but hopefully enough to stuff her up for a while).   The whole endeavor took a few hours, and I made it back to Clint’s house just as the boys were heading out for some basketball (HORSE); I stuck around the apartment doing some blog homework and getting in some solo girl time.  That evening, we cooked up our dinners; Jared and I did a bit of homework for the next leg of the trip, Kangaroo Island, and watched a movie before enjoying a good night’s sleep in a bed again!
That next morning, plans were a bit up in the air.  We wanted to go to Kangaroo Island, the third largest island off of Australia, known for its nature excursions.  Our main problem was getting there; basically it was exceedingly expensive, $300, for roundtrip to only spend one full day there.  We went back and forth a bit before deciding to just bite the bullet and go.  We booked last minute bus to ferry tickets and a car rental.  Luckily, the bus didn’t head out until late afternoon, so we were in perfect timing.  We again packed up everything, and hopped on the bus out to the central bus station.  Our drive to the coast was quite scenic and reminded us both of driving through New Zealand; to be honest, if we were to do it again, we probably would have tried to spend a bit of time in the hill country south of Adelaide.  The passage over to the island was easy, and got us in just after nightfall.  I had checked in advance and booked a camp ground in Cape Jervis that was walking distance from the ferry terminal, so we set up shop, and were able to use some of the camp ground facilities to make a hot dinner, before calling it a night. 
The next morning, we woke up early to pick up the rental car.  Budget did us dirty on this one, only allowing 100km per day of travel (the whole island was 300km one way, so we were prepared to get royally screwed on that) and provided absolutely zero insurance after 6pm due to the high occurrence (according to the rental car guy 50% chance) of wildlife accidents, and even if I returned the car a whole 12 hours early, they charged on a 24 hour basis, so it wouldn’t be any cheaper.  So, yea…ug.  After packing up camp, we set off into the island, stopping at a bunch of lookouts along the way.  I think Jared was a bit disappointed with the lookouts, as they just showed views of the beach, of which he claimed we had enough photos.  We went to a sea lion sanctuary and a koala sanctuary, where we saw a teenie joey (that’s what they call baby koalas) latched on to its mother’s back as she ran away from us into the trees, and a kangaroo with her…baby kangaroo (can’t remember if there’s a special cute name) in the pouch, as well as Little Sahara, which people often sandboard in, but we didn’t because we had already accomplished some epic sandboarding in Latin America.  We made it all the way to the other side of the island that day, to Flinders Chase National Park, just before the sun went down.  There were 2 camp grounds close to the entrance of the park, one was significantly more expensive, but had better facilities, i.e. plumbing, water, and a grill, so in true Cheap Kathleen and Jared fashion, we snuck into the more expensive camp ground, used their facilities to make dinner and then set off to our cheaper camp ground, which was exceedingly bare.  We didn’t even set up the tent that night, as we have found that the car is much warmer overnight, though we tend to sleep worse, so it’s kind of a crud-shoot. 
The next morning, we set out early again.  We made warm breakfast at the nicer camp ground, and drove deeper into the Flinders Chase National Park.  The big attractions within the park, besides the wildlife are the Remarkable Rocks and Admirals Arch, which we were able to see and walk around through.  Lunch time was right around the corner, so we made it to a Liguarian honey farm and got to have a bit of a self-guided tour, actually learning some pretty nifty factoids, along with eating homemade honey ice cream.  At the end of the day, we made it back to Cape Jervis to spend the night.  We were pretty cheap that night, and instead of actually staying inside of the camp grounds from the first night on the island, we parked outside of it, and just used the kitchen equipment, opting to sleep in the car again that night.  I gotta say, as you can probably deduce yourselves, we do this whole traveling/backpacker thing as cheaply as possible, and have both (well Jared already was [or so he claims ;)], it was really just me who had to adjust) become chipper morning people on very little sleep.  It would be easy for us to be at each other’s necks everyday with the crappy sleep we get each night, but we’ve learned to overcome that…if you want a good night sleep, go ahead and pay for it yourself! 
That next morning, we returned the car, and got back on the ferry and bus headed to Adelaide and back to Clint’s place where we ate and watched a (pretty bad, The Master?) movie.  Overall, Flinder’s Ranges was nice, and we could have probably spent an extra day hiking; Kangaroo Island was not our favorite, and was a bit less nature intensive than we had hoped; staying with Clint and getting to catch up was nice, and I think a really awesome moment for Jared.  That next morning was a travel day to Melbourne, so we woke up pretty early and had to make our way to the airport.