It was on the plans going back to the 12 apostles today in the morning in order to take some more pictures, but this time with the sunset.
So despite of a long night some of us got up at 05:30 am again and went to the 12 apostles to find, to our disappointment, that it was completely cloudy and even raining...nice views but no pictures I'm afraid...I would need a submergible camera to take pictures under those conditions. On the positive side, should you be able to find anything positive that early in the morning, we were alone! There were not other tourists there! amazing if you think of the previous day were you would have to use your elbows and a little of pushing persuation in order to create sufficient gap to take a quick snapshot.
With more hope than anything else we went to Loch Arch Gorge
Still raining though...but we kept persisting, next stop was London Bridge. Yes, I got the name right. In fact the name comes from the original London Bridge, apparently because it has two arches (I never stopped to count them in London, but let's assume that's the case). From the pictures you can only see one and the reason for this is that back in 1993 the first arch fell down but the name stuck.
Apparently in 1993 when the bridge still had the 2 arches, tourists could walk all the way to the end of the second arch. The day the first arch fell off a business man and his secretary got trapped on the second arch. It transpired they were having an affair and it didn't count on his favor, in the divource proceedings, the fact that when the rescue helicopter came to pick them up the whole operation was on national television. :-)
Next stop it was the bay of Martyrs
Jules, the guide, knew a good road sign would make my day so, as he pushed hard on the breaks and called my name out loud I was ready with my camera. I took a quick run and managed to add this nice and rare road sign to my collection. :-) I think that 's the point in the excursion where everyone that woke up with the sudden stop learnt about my...how should I call it...Road sign fetish? Nobody is perfect! :-)
Still raining though so when we got to the last visit of the day, a 2 hour walk in the Grampians National Park, let's just say we weren't the happy bunnies we were the day before.
On top of that in this tour we are 21 and 14 of them are Germans so 90% of the conversations in the bus are in German which makes it extremely difficult to get to talk to anyone so you spend most of your time staring at the rain, which is not exactly the best thing to do when you want to lift your spirit.
But against all odds, this walk truly changed everyone's mood. It was a fantastic walk, like the Grand Canyon in Colorado but scaled down. :-)
I'm not sure whether it was because of the awful day we had or just because of its beauty but it was a truly breathtaking experience. Not specially hard of difficult nor long but totally worthwhile. On top of that, it stopped raining!
And the views from the top
And some pictures taken on the way down
On the way up we found an Irish girl who had lost her boyfriend and couldn't find him so we spent some time helping her out. She had the scare of her life. I am glad to report we managed to find the boyfriend...however, it is very likely he will spend the next month or so sleeping on the sofa! :-)
Anyway, after the walk we went to another high point to see the sun to give pass to the night.
I took a different path than everyone else and on that path I´ve found some kind of Kangaroo relative...not as big as a kangaroo but as jumpy as one. I took a picture, tried to get closer and he/she just jumped away. Could it be a Wallabie?
We have a cheff on the group, specialised on chocolate!, he took over the kitchen when we got to the place where we spending the night and made a nice spaguetti bolognese with garlic toasts. Really good!
No chocolate though. :-)
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