canadian_turtle | Recap: Central Coast

Mood:

|| Busy
Tune : Watching Good News Week

November 15:

Got up early and (after rushing Julie :P) picked up Jenny. On our way to Glenworth Valley (Central Coast) the weather was terrible; it was raining hard and more often than not there was a thick curtain of fog obscuring our view. When we made it there however it was only drizzling a little bit and a lot of the fog had cleared up. There were still gorgeous puffs of fog which we could see when looking down the valley, it looked really mystical and I wish we had time to make pictures of it, but unfortunately we didn't as we didn't know how much further it would be to our destination and we only had about half an hour left.

When we made it to the bottom of the valley I did snap a few pics though and it looked like this:

We registered for our first activity of the day, which was horseback riding and we still had about fifteen minutes left so I went all snappy happy when seeing all the different kinds of birds that were flying around in the wild there:

^ Snuggling rainbow lorekeets, d'awww <3

^ A magpie trying to steal the pen from Jenny and Jules

^ And we were off!

I was most worried about actually getting on a damn horse, but it went surprisingly easy. Also was a bit concerned about my horse running off and/or throwing me off as that's what happened when I last rode one uhm.... 15 years ago. But my horse was awesome, it was slow \o/ I really enjoyed the 2 hour ride through the woods. We even went through the water, which was awesome! We also saw a lizard type creature and the other girls saw a yang (?), which I missed. The only things I disliked were the trotting (dude that was uncomfortable O_O) and the flies. Man, those flies really annoyed me (and my horse). All in all though a great ride. Bit sore still but it was worth it.

After the horseback riding we had a few hours to kill so we went to have lunch. Jules had brought kangaroo sausages only none of us had matches. Which meant we couldn't use the barbeque *facepalm* So we just had salad and bread ~~and there were flies, lots of flies...~~

^ View from the picnic area

And then we went quad biking. Doing normal turns etcetera went fine, but uphill which loads of inconvenient bumps? Not so much :\ See, I am used to holding my hands around the steering wheel of my bike back home as well as the brakes (so I can brake fast when needed) which in this case meant that more often than not I was breaking and accelerating at the same time (as I forgot to take my finger of the accelerator), which results in slipping. And when you're driving uphill, with a deep ditch on one side slipping kinda freaked me out. I did eventually made it to the racing ground and my mistake of accelerating and breaking at the same time was pointed out (and I facepalmed, duh. But when biking I was too focussed on the road ahead of me I just hadn't thought of it).

On the racing ground it went alright but because I was still kinda freaked out I didn't go as fast as the others so I asked the guy if I could be in the back of the groups again for the way back. He said however I had to be in the front instead even though I warned him I would slow the group down. He said I could go as slow as I wanted, but after like ten minutes he stopped and decided I was right and I was holding people up so he put me, Julie and Jenny in the back. Ah well, at least we got the most out of our time as it took longer for us to get back than the others. Looking back it was a great experience, but that was once and never again :$

^ Me practicing

^ Lookout from the top of the valley

In the evening we went out for dinner (had awesome pizza and milkshake nom nom nom) and watched some stuff on my laptop (Chuck and So NoTORIous). We went to bed pretty early though as we were all dead tired from the stuff we'd done that day.

^ Pretty view we had on our way to the restaurant

November 16:

Lazy morning included watching a Bewitched marathon on television and finally eating those kangaroo sausages (yay for a kitchen!) which were delicious. The girls wanted to go to the Australian Retile Zoo and while I wasn't too enthusiastic at first I had a great time there (it wasn't just reptiles, woohoo!).

^ A castle house near our motel o.O

^ Pretty view from near our motel

^ Lookout on our way to the Reptile Park

^ Entrance to the park

^ How cute are the koalas? <3

^ Tasmanian Devil

^ A giant tortoise

^ o.O

^ Lucky bird, this croc was fake

^ Wombat!

^ Getting up close with the kangaroos

^ This kid was awesome. He was telling us about feeding the kangaroos and we suspected he goes to the park a lot

^ Feeding the alligators

^ More adorable koalas

^ Feeding the Tasmanian Devils (this guy was awesome btw, he did all the shows and he was incredible funny)

^ It's a turtle pile :D

^ Jules said that the song this spider sang reminded her of Chuck and Morgan (and hey, he's wearing Converse!) lol

^ This is Elvis, he hasn't eaten in weeks

^ So the park got Jitterbugs (I know, right...)

^ And suddenly Elvis was hungry!

^ Inside the reptile room. Looks a bit Indiana Jones-y

Also saw an Indian tarantula which had a tank that was covered in spider cobs. Reminded me of Mohinder. Hey, fandom is never far way ;)

We had lunch in the park and then headed back home. Was home around 3 or 4pm (which was way too early for such an awesome weekend to end) and so tired. Plumped down on my bed with my laptop and a book and didn't move for the first 3 hours :$