After spending a few more days in Adelaide, I went on my tour of Kangaroo Island. There were only six of us on the tour to start with, which is a prety small group for this kind of tour.

We drove out of Adelaide and stopped for breakfast in Yankalilla before getting the ferry to Kangaroo Island. The first place we went was a lookout of Pennington Bay which I'm sure would have been gorgeous if it wasn't almost raining! We then went to Emu Ridge, a Eucalyptus distillery, which is one of the only ones left in Aus (i think!). Our next stop was Parndana wildlife park which was full of the usual Aussie animals including a koala with a joey in its pouch and the kangaroo island kangaroos. They are a type of kangaroo that is only found on the island and we fed them. I made friends with one in particular which held onto my arm after i'd run out of food...it didn't let me go for ages, it was so cute! We also got to hold a joey kangaroo which was also pretty cute.

We headed to the beach at Stokes Bay, where we were supposed to be able to swim or snorkel but it was cold and spitting rain so we just played frisbee on the beach instead for a while. From there we headed on to where we were staying the night - a 'cottage' aka shack near Vivonne Bay. While we were waiting for dinner we were meant to go looking for kangaroos but it was chucking it down and i've seen plenty of roos now so i wasn't particularly enthusiastic about it! So we all sat round chatting instead.

After dinner was the best part of the day. We went down to Vivonne bay with a red torch (or a normal torch with red stuck over it!) to spot penguins coming in from the sea. They go out hunting during the day and then come back at night when it's dark so they can get home without being attacked. We saw two halfway up the hill and then our tour guide Whales turned around and said 'Ok, let's go. They all look the same so once you've seen one, we might as well leave'. He was only kidding though and we found a couple more before we left.

The next day started with a trip to Kelly Hill Caves, which are now the third caves I've been to, so they weren't very interesting. All caves look pretty much the same. From there we went to Bales beach lookout (from which you couldn't actually see any beach) and had lunch nearby before heading to Seal Bay. Seal bay does exactly what it says on the tin - it has loads and loads of Australian sealions! Theye didn't really do much and were mostly just laying on the beach but every so often one would move! We stood there for ages just watching them. It doesn't sound too exciting but it was pretty cool.

In the afternoon we went to Little Sahara and went sandboarding. Something else for me to fall off! I got the hang of it the second time though and had quite a good time flying down the sand dune, even though we were doing it sitting down. We had a race to win a packet of Tim Tams (Aussie biscuits that are like Penguins but better) and I was in a heat with only one other person - it was the English girls against each other. I lost because for some reason i decided not to start til she was halfway down the hill!

Later on we went to a place to see koalas, but now that I've seen some, again I wasn't too fussed. That night we stayed in a hostel and played volleyball against another tour group that were staying there. We won, no thanks to me! I only touched the ball when i served, but i made up the numbers.

On the last day we spent the morning doing a 2km walk at Snake lagoon. We walked to a beach but didn't completely follow the walking track. Instead, we climbed up some rocks and into a cave on the way back down. It was pretty cool cos it was high up enough to have a good view of the beach. The lagoon is supposed to be a place where platypuses live but didn't see any cos they are pretty elusive apparently. I think that's gonna be one Aussie animal I won't get to see in the wild.

Next stop was the Remarkable Rocks. From a lookout where you can see them in the distance, they don't look very remarkable, but up close they are pretty cool. We spent a bit of time climbing around on the rocks, including getting inside one which made it look like you're on tv. The last interesting place we went was Admrial's Arch. The Arch itself was interesting to look at, but we spent most of our time watching the New Zealand fur seals playing around in the water. By this time it was pretty windy and there were big waves crashing on the rocks, so the seals were messing around in the rock pools and jumping about in the waves.

We had to go back to the hostel we stayed in the night before becase some idiot (otherwise known as me) had left her shoes on the volleyball court where they'd been used to mark the corner of the court. Got them back though and then we headed off to get the ferry back to the mainland. Tonight I have one more night in Backpack Oz, the hostel I stayed in for a week in Adelaide before this trip, then I leave tomorrow for the Great Ocean Road.