On December 6th we woke up quite cheerfully and moved on to Adelaide. We checked into our hotel, dumped our luggage again and returned the car to the rental agency. Since we were downtown already, we hit the arcades for some lunch and shopping.

Since I can’t buy anything (we are carrying way too much luggage), the shopping was finished in time and we walked to the Adelaide wine centre through the Botanical garden.

There we both failed miserably at creating our own Shiraz in the exhibition, so we decided to leave it to the pros and went on to the wine tasting part. (In fact, the building is huge, but the wine museum consists of only two rooms.)

For the wine tasting we got a chipcard. With that card we could go to any of the wines, tap the computer, choose how big a glass you want for tasting, and it would fill up automatically. We found a nice bottle to take home and got into the bus to the hotel that was practically waiting for us in front of the wine centre.

On Friday we went on a tour to Kangaroo island. A tour, because it costs a fortune and a lot of time to go by yourself. Since we did not do Philip Island for the same reasons, we decided to give it a try this time. This meant getting up at 5 or something, to be at the central bus station on time. After that, is was a lot of driving. A lot! I think we were driven around for 800 or 900 km in just the one day. A bit too much for my opinion as well. But, we did get to catch up on our wildlife! From the name you might think that there are millions of kangaroos just hopping around the island, but the first wild animals we saw were in fact sea lions.

And many of them! The ranger told us that we were very lucky to see them being as active, because they are apparently usually lazy bastards and tourists can be happy to see a fin moving. With us, they were going in and out of the water, chasing each other and one male was flirting his way through the whole crowd. We then had some good (and too much) dinner and moved on to The Remarkable Rocks. In my humble opinion the stones looked like broken eggshells, but huge broken eggshells with a wild sea in the background, so still pretty cool.

Next stop was the Admiral’s Arch. Awesome! Most people got distracted by the sea lions that had apparently followed us, but I definitely enjoyed the arch.

Before we left the national park, we stopped at the visitor centre where we saw our first wild koalas! Not thanks to ourselves, because although our whole group was surrounding a specific tree and looking (and photographing) in the same direction, it still took us 5 more minutes to spot the little bugger. So who knows how many we have come across without noticing?!

The next day we had a similar programme to the first one in Adelaide: shopping and wine tasting. In two days we would fly to Alice Springs with Qantas and although you can pay to bring extra baggage, you can’t take it all in one trunk. So, we had to buy another bag to redistribute our stuff. After we hit several shops with way overprized and unpractical options, we found a simple duffle bag that weighs nothing and was cheap. Then we took a bus to visit the Adelaide Hills. Unfortunately it was raining again today and cold. After getting out of the bus up there, I nearly froze to death. You can imagine how good the offer sounded after we reached Hahndorf winery where they offered a wine flight with matching chocolate. Two please!

The fun about this specific winery is of course that it grows Austrian grapes in Southern Australia! So we had ourselves some Grüner Veltliner, Zweigelt and Blaufränkisch. (No the chocolate was not from Milka..) The combinations were great and since we both enjoyed the Blue Blood Blaufränkisch, we decided to buy a bottle as a gift for Yigal’s family where we are to stay in Perth.

Refusing to get another cold in Australia, we took an Uber to the second winery, Shaw + Smith. Very different from Hahndorf! The first had three very proper ladies attending us, while this was clearly a hipster place. Very busy though! And a beautiful vineyard surrounding the modern tasting room. We enjoyed our wines, but prefered those from Hahndorf. At 5pm the winery closed and we took an Uber to our hotel.

Now, when I say “hotel” I actually mean caravan park. Yes, we are staying in a caravan park. No, not in an actual caravan, but a room on the same ground. It is actually a nice place! People are friendly and you have a kitchen, laundry service and everything else you need right there. Besides: we are going on a three day camping trip to Uluru, so it is good to get into the mood…