Sow and piglets

I told Riley that if I didn’t wake up when the alarm went off to just shake me and say “We’re going to see the 12 apostles today!” and that should wake me up! I was more than ready, well after getting up and taking a much needed shower, to finally go and see the 12 apostles like we had been planning for so long. We walked down the street from our couchsurfing host’s house to a hostel where the bus would pick us up at 6:55, bright and early in the morning. A small 15 passenger bus came around the corner which wasn’t a shocker because I knew we’d be picking up other people and heading to the office first. What did shock us is that we were actually going to be taking that exact bus down to the Great Ocean Road with one tour guide and 15 passengers. I think we both had one of those big greyhound buses in mind, but this just made the tour that much personal. Our tour guide yelled from the driver seat different facts about Melbourne and sights along the way which was interesting. He kept quiet for a while and that’s when I drifted off to sleep on Riley’s shoulder. Car rides are definitely relaxing and a good way to catch up on sleep. I woke up five minutes before Chris (our tour guide) made the announcement that we were officially on the Great Ocean Road! Of course we had to stop and take pictures since we’re all tourists!

Another forty minutes down the road we stopped at a small town for some biscuits and coffee. Turns out that a lot of Australian families have houses in these small towns similar to how we Americans have beach houses for the summer holidays! They actually come down for their Christmas break and the town population grows from 2,000 to 20,000! Then we were back on the road with our first official stop of seeing some wild koala bears! We didn’t know this was part of the tour so we were in complete amazement. We have searched for koala bears many times in Australia always being unsuccessful but since time we got to see lots and even caught some awake and eating.

There's 3 koalas in this picture - can you spot them?

These koalas are part of a large colony that stick to this area and are actually eating up all the eucalyptus leaves. They may actually cause their kind to eventually starve to death since they refuse to eat anything else and with their population growing so quickly. Further along down the path was our next stop of the Otway lighthouse for lunch. The only bad thing about guided tours is you’re always on a tight schedule meaning we had forty minutes to get lunch, eat and view the lighthouse. That meant we were practically inhaling our food and then running to the lighthouse to only get blown away by hurricane force winds! We were able to climb our first lighthouse and get on the viewing dock to feel the wind in our face. We circled it slowly but I turned away after we got to the other side because I could barely move forward. Riley soon followed because we weren’t sure if we’d be able to get back into the lighthouse on that side and didn’t want to take the chance!

We kept our time schedule and were back on the bus to finally see the main attraction – the 12 apostles! Once again we were given 45 minutes to view it so we took off running! Let me tell you, the pictures don’t do this natural wonder justice. It is truly amazing to be that up close and personal with these limestone structures and how they have survived. It is a shame that the ocean is wearing down the structure though and soon there will be no more 12 apostles. Although there were never 12 to begin with! We took our time getting all of our pictures in and such looking out across the ocean in amazement. Then it was a short journey to Loch Ard Gorge where two survivors from a shipwreck were washed up on shore. Ironically it was a guy and a girl both 18 years old, but no romantic story came out of it.

Loch Ard Gorge - 2 survivors slipped through that opening!

The next stop was Gibson Steps which are man made by a guy with the last name of Gibson so he could get down to the water quick whenever a shipwreck occurred off the coast.

Unfortunately that was the last stop for our tour, but we didn’t mind since we had seen everything we wanted and more! We were both exhausted as was everyone else since the bus was completely quiet and almost everyone was sleeping. Luckily the bus had come to the consensus that Melbourne had a lot more eating options than the small towns and we could just push through the trip back and get back into the city much earlier than expected. Plus, Chris was going to drop us off at the hostel where he picked us up so we were super close to Sean’s place! We grabbed supplies to make spaghetti – Australian style – and just relaxed for the night with everyone there (two German girls were actually staying at Sean’s as well). Sean came back not shortly after and we casually slipped into a 45 minute conversation about food at NC State. As you may know Riley and I talk about food a lot, but a 45 minute conversation was a little crazy. We really liked Sean though since the conversation was just so easy and funny. Plus I was able to get some helpful tips from the girls about my upcoming trip to Germany!