The trip began at 4.30am on Monday 20th of April, that's when we all woke up after a night at Jeremy's place. Washed ourselves, had breakfast, get changed and head out at 5.30am. By 6.00am, we are already in the city.
The coach arrived at around 6.15am to pick us up at King William Street, then head to different hostels to pick up the other member of the tour. There are the 3 of us Malaysians, a Singaporean friend, an Isreali paramedic, two English, a couple of Dutch and a couple of Germans, and also 2 locals. That makes 13 of us.
by 6.30am, everyone is on their way to Cape Jervis, where we had to take the ferry over to the island. We arrived at Cape Jervis just in time to catch the 9am ferry, which will take 45 minutes to cross from Australia mainland to Kangaroo Island.
Since the cost to transport a car over is expensive, the tour company had a couple of coach over at the island, so we took all our stuffs and meals for 3 days into the ferry with us, leaving the coach behind. Then we enjoy 45 minutes of blue sea water, birds gliding over them with cool breeze bathing our face with occasional splash of water. From afar we can see the island, which is 7 times larger than Singapore.
When we reach the island, we bring all our stuff from the ferry into the awaiting coach, and then head to a nearby store to stock up on more food and to have our toilet breaks. We were instructed to buy anything we might have forgotten to bring there (toothbrush, shampoo, beers etc) because once we leave the small town, it's all wilderness. Heck, there isnt even phone coverage on the whole island except the town area.
After everything's settled, Whales the tour guide drove a fair distance to our first sight seeing location, which is one of the viewpoints that look out at the ocean. The view is simply amazing, i have never seen any water body that sparkle as much, any sound made by waves as clear.
After a few minutes of picture taking, we head to our next destination, the Eucalyptus Oil Distillery. This is where they produce eucalyptus oil, which is said to be good for health and other usage. Many type of products were produced from them, including shampoo, perfume, balms or just the pure eucalyptus oil itself. Besides eucalyptus oil, the distillery also rear a few emus, and products like emu egg shells, feet skins and feathers were sold there too.
After that, lunch! we were brought to a beach which name i forgot, but it is said to be the top 10 beach in Australia. Too bad that time it's high tide, so we dun get to see much sand. But the beach is still beautiful nonetheless.
I mean, how many beach can u see having water as clear as this?
After visiting the beach while Whales is preparing lunch of bread, ham, chicken and other dressings, we went to Little Sahara. Basically, Little Sahara is a big pile of sand in the middle of the jumgle area, where people can run up and down them, and do stuff like sandboarding or quad biking. Unfortunately for us, the session did not go so well as the board provided by the tour company is lousy, so we did not get much of action. So Whales decided to take some money of the tour payment to rent a better sand board and sleigh the next day. So pics of Little Sahara will be on the next post ;)
After the trip to Little Sahara, we made our way to our cottage where we stayed for the first night for dinner.
For that night, we had kangaroo meat for dinner with pita bread, and they were cook to perfection! Normally people will say kangaroo meat is tough, but I learnt that the reason it became tough is because people always overcook it.
After dinner, we all head out to watch penguins! too bad i did not have any pics of them, because camera flash would cause the penguins to get stunned for a few minutes, which is enough time for predators to strike. But witnessed how penguins swim back from the sea, climb up the cliffs, cross the road to get to the other side (Why does the penguin cross the road?), climb another set of cliffs, then enter their burrow to feed their youngs. They did it so cautiously that it took them about 3 minutes to cross a road that we humans can cross in 5 seconds.
Then we all head back to get ready for bedtime, while some of us stay out for a bit more while to sit around the campfire and talk about some random subjects.
After all that, bedtime! The story of Day 2 should be the next post, so stay tuned!
