Up and at ‘em today to check out of our Adelaide Hotel and hit the road to Cape Jervis, SA where we picked up our car ferry to our home for the next two nights: Kangaroo Island! We have had probably 100+ Aussies ask us where we are traveling to, and each time we mention Kangaroo Island (KI to the locals), they are joyous and say things like “Brilliant!” or “Lovely!”, so evidently this is a good call. We arrived in plenty of time to catch our ferry. Pluses so far: it’s a gorgeous, sunny, low 70s temps day (perfect!) and we are on time; Minuses: the freaking 🤬🤬 black bush flies are back, assaulting our eyes and nose and mouth at every outing, along with some of the biting larger black flies. I had hoped that was a “desert problem” that we’d left behind in Uluru, but alas, no. We’ve found them in Sydney, Adelaide, Grampians, and now KI. Some areas are worse than others and evidently it is a seasonal thing, but we are hoping to find a gift shop to buy fly nets tomorrow 😭. Now that you have finished playing the world’s smallest violin to accompany my sad tale of woe, let me return to the regularly scheduled programming and show you some cool sea ferry pics from our 45 minute ride to the island:

We arrived on KI around 1:45, and checked into our little hotel, the Sea Front Hotel. It is small and very no frills, but is is clean and we can see the water from our room, so thumbs up from us.

After we got settled in, we decided to drive more of the “Southern Ocean Drive” which features KI plus some of the areas we drove leaving Adelaide. We looped around the north end of the island making stops of interest to us (smoked oysters snack, KI brewing company, another painted silo, a tidal swimming pool, etc.) to the town of Kingscote, and then headed back to our hotel before dusk. Because of the quantity of wildlife here, they recommend not driving after dusk since many animals (especially kangaroos) are out feeding then. Driving the roads here- even in broad daylight- was a sad testament to the “animals v. cars” problem, and we passed double digits numbers of dead kangaroos, as well as some dead koalas. It was heartbreaking 💔 , so we feel pretty firm about sticking to day drives here and driving carefully. Tomorrow we plan to explore more of the island.

Is there such a thing as too much fairy penguin hunting?

We had dinner near our hotel at the Penneshaw Pub, which was pretty good! After dinner we walked over to the tour meeting place for our nighttime activity: a penguin viewing tour! We had done this on our own with some tour group friends while in Tasmania, but discovered that it is an activity that probably is better left to going with professionals who know where the penguins hang out at night, and who have the red flashlights that help you see the penguins, rather than us just assuming that every dark blob that moved might be a penguin (true story!). Our guides have said that the penguins are sensitive to light and noise, so no one is supposed to use flash cameras or flashlights, and red lights are better. We were also advised to stay as quiet as possible. Because we didn’t have red lights last time, we couldn’t see much of the fairy penguins (although we did see some!). This time, we were all given red flashlights and our guide took us right to the penguin nest areas, so we got to see a bunch of the cute little guys and gals! It was also a perfect night with limited light pollution from KI, so we saw two satellites and tons of stars, including a shooting star! A magical evening!!

Thanks for adventuring with us!