And the road trip begins

Yup, today's the day: we are finally renting the car and going West from Melbourne to drive on the Great Ocean Road. Look out!

We had breakfast at Steve as usual and said our goodbyes: they were such wonderful hosts and I hope we'll be able to return the favor sometimes in the future. Steve was super nice and drove us (and all our luggage) to the rental car place, which was downtown. We signed the paperwork, got directions to get out of the city (and avoid tolls) and we were on our way...driving on the wrong side of the road...whoo hooo.

Getting out of the city was not exactly relaxing..you try driving on the other side of the road in city traffic...David was extremely good, and got us out of there with no problems, and before we knew it, we were on the freeway.

We stopped along the way to go see the Erkine fall, just outside of Lorne: the lower platform was closed for work so we only went to the upper one, and it was worth the stop. The woods are amazing, with all the birds singing and the awesome smells...it's very different from anything we've ever seen.

We got back in the car and made our way to the 12 Apostles, in Port Campbell. We got there around 4 and holy cow what a sight! The coastline in this area is even more spectacular than the portion before Apollo Bay.

We took some pictures then went to find the campground we wanted to stay in: and lucky for us they had plenty of spots so we pitched our tent and got settled. Once that was done, we went back out to explore more sites: there are so many different areas to look at. We also wanted to go back to the apostles to catch the sunset...and it was totally worth it.

I eventually started driving just to get the hang of it, since up until that point David did all the driving. I have to say you really do get used to it, but I'm also very grateful for the signs all over the road reminding you to stay on the left. Obviously there are lots of tourists in this area.

We got back to the campground at passed 9 pm (yup then sun sets pretty late since it's summer) and we made ourselves a quick dinner and got settled for the night. This place has free wifi and right now I'm sitting in the tent blogging: you gotta love technology :)