Saturday - Kangaroo Island

Hello from Kangaroo Island! We arrived here this morning (Saturday am) after leaving Melbourne and flying through Adelaide.
Before we left Melbourne, we had a great dinner at Verge, a French-Japanese fusion restaurant - dishes included eel tortellini and barramundi with a yuzu noodle and saffron.




We arrived at Kangaroo Island in the late morning. We are actually in a half time zone
now, so that we are 15 1/2 hours ahead of New York (until tomorrow when the time changes in the US so that it will be 14 1/2 hours - Australia doesn't change the clocks until the end of March). It was about an hour drive to Southern Ocean Lodge where we are staying. This hotel is gorgeous! Really really beautiful and special. The place has been open about a year and it seems that they have thought of every detail. We are in Room 10 - Eva - they are all named after shipwrecks off the coast of Kangaroo Island.


Our lunch was delicious and the room has one wall that is entirely windows - looking south - next stop Antarctica! The staff seems really lovely and helpful. And even as someone who has never been a big drinker, they have such a huge self-serve bar (everything here is 'included') with tons of all local (Australian) wines, beers, liqueurs/apertifs (things that we have never seen before or heard of and look very tasty) that I almost wish for a cocktail! Craig already has been having a fun time with that - at lunch he sampled sparkling shiraz, local beer made with honey from the island, southern Australian riesling, and a dessert wine - hahaha.... And we already saw two koalas on our drive from the main road (to Katie, unfortunately, we had too many people with us to climb up and steal one for you, but we're still on the lookout!)


After lunch and a quick rest, we headed about 10 minutes away to the Kelly Caves which were discovered by local farmers about 100 years ago.
We took a tour which was pretty cool - lots of stalactites and fewer but still a decent number of stalagmites.




When we got back to the hotel, we visited with the kangaroo who lives here. His name is Sol (as in Southern Ocean Lodge) and he took to Craig very quickly! He is six months old and has been living at the hotel since he was tiny - they feed him and help care for him here but he also wanders off and then returns. On one of those trips, he broke his leg, so he has a cast on right now.







We then walked down towards the beach - it is very rocky and you probably wouldn't sit on it directly but they have some chairs and tables at the end of the walkway so that we could admire the view (and take pictures). What a beautiful sight of the ocean, beach, and rocky cliffs.
We are looking forward to our dinner here tonight (preceded by cocktails and canapes) and then are going on a nocturnal tour/walk outside the hotel where we hope to see a lot of animals.
We will post more from here but tomorrow we have a full day private tour of the whole island including the National Park and seeing the sea lions.