I think when we left off last we were going to the Hunter Valley to do some wine tasting. Well we have done that and so much more! The Hunter Valley is where most Australian wines come from. We went down for 3 days and stayed at a pretty cool hostel down there where we were the only people not picking grapes. It was crazy!...on our first day that we arrived the whole place was empty..kind of a cabin-like joint in the middle of the valley. We thought we were the only people staying there until late in the afternoon the whole hostel was flooded by dirty,muddy, stinky grape pickers! Maybe they were a little jealous that we were there on holiday tasting wine and they were breaking their backs in the fields all day! Oh well....we got to tell them how great the wine was! The wine famous in this region is Semillon, which is a super fruity white grape with a really clean and crisp flavor, somewhat similar to Sauv Blanc.Our tour consisted of 4 wineries (one of which specialized in sparkling wines)a cheese tasting, and a free BBQ dinner at the local Irish Pub.
While in the Hunter Valley we checked out their local zoo which was very cool. They had a big pen full of baby kangaroos and emus that you could feed out of an ice cream cone and cuddle with. Kangaroos are so soft! One of the other highlights was the koala that they pulled out of its pen so you could pet it and take photos.The koala was so amazingly friendly, we were just waiting for it to start talking to us! (We actually had an interesting conversation with the koala about American politics...he was quite informed for a koala!)
Our next adventure included a surf camp with our totally rad stoner surfing instructor that mad fun of us for looking like fairies while we were attempting to surf.That shits hard man! But overall we did pretty good...we caught a few waves (standing up of course). But by the end of the day we were worn out as hell!
Then the Blue Mountains.What can I say...waterfalls out the wazoo, breathtaking views of Grand Canyon-like valleys and tons of lizards and parrots running wild! And the mountains(well more like canyons) really are blue! We stayed in a little town called Katoomba at the coolest hostel ever (thanks Sage for the awesome recommendation!)It was really chill and a great place to unwind. Tomorrow we head out for Bali! Gotta go! Running out of time! Try to stay warm back home! We miss ya and love ya!
Maggie and Mike
