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Hey all!
The last few days we've been taking a bus to get from Sydney to Melbourne--the Oz Experience Bus. It's actually been pretty different from the Kiwi Bus--in NZ you basically didn't drive for more than 3 hours in a day and you stayed at proper overnight stops every night. To be honest, the Oz Bus isn't fantastic, as we drive for hours on end and still have to stop in the middle of nowhere, at not very nice hostels...the buses are really cramped as well (less leg room than a plane!), really bumpy, and all the bags have to go in a trailer behind the bus, giving my bag a hole in it (don't know what to do about that...!). Also, the back window smashed though whilst travelling on a dirt road...
But other than that, it's been good! We don't do loads of stuff on the Oz Bus--the first day we stopped in Canberra, the capital, and checked out the Parliament house and had lunch...Our overnight stop was in Thredbo (near Jindabyne), in a quite nice dorm, with a TV, a pool and sauna. It was cold though so I didn't really stay in that long. The next morning we climbed the highest mountain/point in Australia, Mount Koscioskzo (sp??). That was about 13km, and took about 5 hours. Quite a hike! Then it was driving for the rest of the day, to a remote place near Lakes Entrance. The last day we drove though Wilson's Promontory Point, which was nearly all burnt down because of the recent bush fires. It was really sad, but really incredible to see, as bits you could see were still really bushy and thick, and then the rest was just barren...we also saw a baby wombat running on the road (and an echinda)!
Anyway, it was a Big relief to get to the Melbourne Metro YHA, which is really nice! It has a cafe that serves breakfast and dinner, so we're having proper food again. I had a poached egg on toast with hash brown today, Adam had pancakes, and yesterday I had a bacon and egg sandwich and lasagne for dinner--breakfasts are about $5, dinner about $10, so not bad! The room also has a TV and all that, it's so nice!
Yesterday was definately one of the best days of the gap year! It was our Penguin Parade/Koala Highlights day trip on Philip Island. It didn't start till 11, so nice to have a lie in! Our first really interesting stop was at a wildlife sanctuary. It started with us buying some food for $1 each--to feed the Kangaroos (Eastern Greys)!! Well, the first thing we saw were Tazmanian Devils--they are so so cute! We couldn't touch or feed them though, as they have the third strongest jaws in the world (after crocs and hyenas), and would break all the bones in our arms...but they were still cute, running around looking for food as they had just been fed..
After that we went in the wallaby/koala section (a large enclosure, same set up as a petting zoo). Most of the koalas were sleeping, and I know they're meant to be super cute and everything, but I prefered the other animals. Again, we weren't allowed to touch them. The wallabies were adorable!! We could feed those as well. My favourite was a little small (baby?) one, it was so so soft (we could pet them), and it put its paw on my hand so it could eat! It had a small soft little paw (thankfully it didn't use its claws). I felt its tongue as well, it was so fantastic. They also had quite a greedy little pony, a donkey, goats, alpacas, and emus which are really scary looking (kind of like dinosaurs, oddly enough)! All of those we could feed. They also had dingos, which were cute (and looked just like dogs). Then we went to the Kangaroo section. They were hungry! At one point I had four eating out of my hand! Once they finished the food in your hand they were really cute as they would reach their noses up, sniffing and begging for more food. It was such a fantastic experience. The last major animal we saw was a type of cockatoo (we've seen loads of one type, wild ones pretty much everywhere, white birds with a yellow head, but this was a different type)...they could imitate what people said, and one of them just kept saying "Hello" in a really British, cockney accent, it was hilarious, I've never heard anything like it!
We went to Nobbies Beach after that, but on a spur of the moment decision (mainly as it was so cheap), Adam and I took a detour, on a helicopter ride! It was only $70, it was quite short but it's generally so much more expensive. It was great views of Philip Island, such a cool experience. After having a few minutes on the beach/scouting for penguins under the boardwalk, we had our Pizza Dinner, and then the main highlight of the tour--the Penguin Parade. For us it wasn't really the highlight though; basically all the penguins come in every night from the ocean after a day of fishing, and they've marketed this majorly for tourism. We thought it would be fairly remote, but there were 3 grandstands, and despite the staff telling them not to, people running around to get a better look, making noise, etc. We did see some Little (the smallest in the world) Penguins up close though. Overall, a great day!!
Today we've had a day off--a sleep in (till 9am! Yay!), and then we took the tram to Eureka tower. Last night on our tour we got a free coupon to go on the "Edge" Experience for free! We had to pay the $16 each to go up this 88 storey building (higher observation point than Sydney tower), and get these amazing views. I think its about 280m up? The "Edge" was this section of the tower that was completely glass (only about 4cm thick), and for each group of people, it would extend out of the buidling by a few metres so you were over the whole city! It was quite cool, and we got a discount for being YHA members for the general price anyway. Other than that, we found a supermarket, and now are about to have dinner, but I'm nearly out of time so I have to run! Tomorrow, back on the bus :( to get to Adelaide!
Cristina
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