It's Monday here and we are in our hotel at the Hobart airport, mostly packed and ready to fly out tomorrow to Melbourne. We are spending tomorrow night with John and Jo, the parents of my friend Susan back in Edmonton. They have hosted us before and we are so fortunate to be able to stay with them again.
I've been off line for a few days so I have some catching up to do! It has been a busy crazy few days. After a long drive over two major mountain ranges between Strahan on the west coast and Bruny Island on the eastern shore on Friday, we collapsed into our cabin at Quiet Corner (seriously) on South Bruny Island. We found an early dinner at the only eatery open--the Bruny Hotel-- then headed home to bed. We heated up the electric mattress warmers and didn't budge until the sun came up over Adventure Bay.
South Bruny is home to Tasmania's #1adventure tour so we set out on foot in the morning to "follow the yellow boat road". The yellow boats are naiads, rubber zodiac-type boats that seat about 40 passengers and can skim over the water at amazing speeds without spilling your drink. Actually, there are no drinks or food aboard, but they do offer muffins and coffee before you leave and lunch when you return. So after hitchiking back to our cabin and piling on every bit of warm clothing we could find we boarded at 11, donned red full length water and spray proof capes, and sped off for the Great South Ocean. The geology of the south coastline defies description--walls of vertical dolomite cliffs that dwarf the boat, an amazing blow hole that drenches the cliffs (and the boat), birds and seals of course, caves, giant pillars of stone soaring up out of the water like sky-scrapers. Further off shore, we witnesed a feeding frenzy of bottle nose dolphins, tassie fur seals, albatross, cormorants, and more. We just sat in the middle of it all and watched nature in all its jaw-dropping wonder. The seals dive deep and bring food to the surface leaving their scraps for the birds who swoop in and grab what they can! Absolutely amazing to watch.
Last night we went out to the penguin rookery but saw only one little fairy penguin who had waddled his way up to his burrow earlier in the evening. We did finally find a great breakfast at the Bruny Cafe in Allorah this morning, then headed for the ferry. We stopped at the cheese-beer-bread shop and sampled cheeses; reluctantly we passed up the whiskey tasting curther down the road. From the dock we headed south into the apple orchards, stopping at a fine weaving studio high up in the hills above Woodbridge, a great cafe in Cygnet, found coffee in Huonville, and then made our way through Hobart and to the hotel. Whew.
We fly to SFO on Wednesday morning and arrive about the same time, on Wednesday, of course. We are home to Calgary on Thursday after a lay over in SFO. I'll try to catch up on some of what I've missed over the next couple of days. We are looking forward to warmer weather in Melbourne tomorrow before the big chill of home.
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