November 18th….A random stop at the zoo….

Today we loved waking up in the hotel! My usual 3am intermission was spent watching TV instead of listening for mice and freaking out about every noise I hear. I took my time getting ready, as you do when you haven’t had many proper showers for over a month. We pre-made lunch and packed it away, with the intentions of not stopping until we couldn’t stand it anymore.

We got on the road and out of Adelaide via Hahndorf, a small German town with lots of shopping and chocolate. We didn’t spend much time there since we are out of money, but the drive this morning and last night have sure done a lot to renew our idea of what kind of city Adelaide is. I actually very much enjoy the place and think it’s a really cool city where I wish I could spend more time (as opposed to the boring city we discovered the first time around). I’m pretty glad we went out of our way to see it again.

Now we’re on a new track. Instead of going back to Jindabyne via Canberra and coming in from the north, we are following the Murray River and coming through the mountain pass and in from the south. It’ll actually be a more scenic drive and a route I’ve never been.

So, after Hahndorf we got on the Princess Highway and went through a town called Monarto and saw a sign for the Monarto zoo. This sparked my curiosity so we exited and went to check out the place. Good thing because today was amazing. The zoo is on 2500 acres of land and is an open-plains zoo with animals from all over the world roaming freely (basically). We went on a sort of safari through the African section and got to pet the rhinos and feed the giraffes. It was a good detour from what was supposed to be a very long and boring day, but it has set us back a day from our estimated arrival back to Jindy. No worries.

We have made plans this weekend to camp on the lake and have a massive lake weekend, bringing out all the toys. It should be so freaking fun. I can’t wait. You’d think we’d have enough of camping by now!

Animal death count….

Birds: 7+
Snakes: 2
Lizards: hard to tell
Kangaroos: 1
Mice: 2

Kilometers: 258,888 woah.