Day 93 - Grampians!

I had SO MUCH FUN THIS WEEKEND!! I am so unbelievably happy I went, and I'm feeling totally refreshed to get back into things. Friday night we drove down in this bus for what was supposed to be a 3 hour bus ride, but ended up taking closer to 4 since we were stuck in traffic for an hour. This would have been horrible if I hadn't been with some of the best people in the world, so we ended up just having a wonderful time! We finally arrive at the campsite around 11:30 and realize there are kangaroos EVERYWHERE. Seriously, everywhere you turn there were kangaroos as common as there are squirrels around Wooster! You have to be apparently be really careful with them though since they'll try and steal food from all the campers. But honestly IT'S A FREAKING KANGAROO stealing my food so I don't think I'd mind.

We woke up the next morning and walked out of our cabin to go to the breakfast cabin and this is what greeted us!

After breakfast we drove to this giant mountain where we went rock climbing! Now I don't mean those things that have the pre-made knobs and things that you put your hands and feet on -- I mean we were literally climbing about 20 meter high cliffs! It was so scary, but since I had one of my guy friends belay for me, he was practically pulling me up the wall himself. I barely had to climb because the harness was held so tight against me so it made it a lot easier. After we climbed up the cliff, we went abseiling down another face of the mountain. That was FAR scarier, as literally it's you literally backing up over the side of a cliff, and it didn't help that I was the second one to do it in our group after the one person who was experienced. I felt SUPER proud of myself after I did it though, and the views were absolutely gorgeous!!

We left the rock climbing wall and had I guess a true Australian picnic lunch -- a box lunch. This entails putting a ton of different things into a giant lobster pot, like tomatoes, beans, corn chips, onions, and I don't even know what else and then putting it all in a tortilla. It was a weird combination of all the different ingredients, but it wasn't bad! We then went and hiked up Mount Zero, which is called that since apparently it is a magnetic anomaly. People seemed to want to race up the mountain, so we ended up summating after a half hour or so, but it was the hardest uphill climb I've like ever done. It was especially hard after having rock climbed all morning so we were all exhausted when we got to the top. But it was so worth it!

After we got down, we headed over to a different part of the mountain to see some aboriginal artwork that was carved into the mountain. It wasn't exactly what I was expecting, but the fact that the hand prints are 600 years old is pretty cool!

The rest of the day was spent exploring waterfalls, a giant lake called Lake Bellfield, an Australian barbie for dinner, and drinking cider until we all were so exhausted we had to go to bed. The next day wasn't quite as eventful, but still really cool! We went to this aboriginal center where we learned about the different aboriginal tribes that occupied the Grampians. We got to paint our own boomerangs, which I'm actually super proud of how mine turned out! We then learned how to actually throw boomerangs, and of course I was so incredibly bad that mine just fell right to the ground, but I'm totally blaming the wind for that. Then as we were leaving, we look over and see this GIANT snake in the bushes, and our tour guide tells us that it is the most venomous snake in the entire world. It's about time I see something that could kill me! But I'm so happy I went on this whole trip and it was one of the best times I've had here so far!

Yikes.