January 20 - Yarra Valley to Apollo Bay
After breakfast, we checked out early and walked to the rental car office. We wanted to get on the road as soon as possible to make the most of the car. Again, I hopped in the driver's seat and trusted in Gerald to lead me in the right direction!
With very little troubles, not bad considering the pitiful map from the rental company, we made our way out of Melbourne. When will we learn? That is one constant regardless of the car rental company: awful maps. I figure that this is done purposely so that when you're rushing to bring the car back on time, the map will fail you and you'll end up bringing the car back late forcing you to pay for an extra day. Scary how possible that sounds, isn't it?
Within an hour, we were northeast of Melbourne in the Yarra Valley region. We found ourselves gasping at the beauty of the rolling hills, the shallow valleys, the rows of grapevines, the cows, the distant "mountains", and the mixture of all of these in one glance!
We began our tour by stopping in at Domaine Chandon. This is a "sparkling" wine producer. They're not allowed to call it champagne as the region of Champagne in France has made Champagne a trademark and that only sparkling wines from that region are allowed to be named Champagne. Anyways, we tried their bubbly and their still wines. All were quite yummy. If only our palates were sophisticated enough and our memories were clear enough, we may be able to compare these vintages with those that we tried nine years ago when we visited the Napa Valley Domaine Chandon. Our server assured us that they would be very different. Too bad that we weren't going home right away, we could bring some bottles home with us and do a taste test!
In all, we visited five wineries, two are small boutique wineries: Oakridge, Badger's Brook, two are the bigger ones that export abroad: TarraWarra and DeBortoli, and the aforementioned Domaine Chandon. I decided to be the DD (Skipper), so I skipped some of the tastings. Even though a tasting is usually only slightly larger than a tablespoon, I do not want to take any chances with the 0.05% blood alcohol limit down here. Isn't that a great idea? I wish Canada would lower its rate; it really made me more cautious. Actually, the limit really should be 0%, that would take eliminate all guesswork and unnecessary chances that people take.
Halfway through the day, we had ourselves a makeshift picnic at a lovely gazebo on the DeBortoli site. The picture will do a better job of explaining the wonderful view we had from our picnic table. It was so pretty that is seemed like it must have been a painted scenery like they have at Universal Studios.
We left the area around 3pm with at least another four hours of driving to get us to our hostel along the Great Ocean Road. We had to backtrack until Melbourne, but we successfully stumbled upon the road that allowed us to bypass the city center and we quickly found ourselves on the freeway ahead of Friday night rush hour traffic.
After making our way through Melbourne, just skirting north of the central business district, we found ourselves heading for the West Gate Bridge. This large bridge crosses over the harbour at such a height which enables the large cargo ships to enter the port.
We cruised along the four lane freeway at a very steady pace, so steady in fact, that Gerald zonked out. About a half hour later, we'd driven into a major thunderstorm and the rain was pounding down so hard that the car was beginning to hydroplane. I slowed down, but watched so many crazy fools fly past me. Gerald was fast asleep with his seat reclined, this kind of scared me. If one of these idiots slid into me, Gerald's seatbelt would do much good. I felt bad waking him up, but he understood my concern.
After another few miles, the rain finally slowed the traffic down to about 50km/hr. Just when we thought the rain couldn't get any stronger, it did. The wipers couldn't keep up. I started to contemplate pulling over and just as I asked for Gerald's opinion, we could see other drivers making the same decision. I bet there must have been at least forty cars in a row, stopped on the side of the highway. Unbelievably, there were still some fools driving by, but at least they had slowed to a crawl.
We sat for a good ten minutes waiting out the storm. A couple of the claps of thunder were quite loud. One bolt of lightening seemed to hit the farmhouse right across the road from us. We had just enough time to blurt out, "Wow!" before the thunder rumbled the car and caused us to jump in our seats. Cool!
As with most thunderstorms, the bright sunshine appeared almost instantly. Shortly, we were in Geelong, a smaller city south of Melbourne, chowing down on a McOz burger, a deli sandwich, fries and a milkshake. Complete gluttony.
Not far out of Geelong, the road began to meander along the southern coast. How pretty. Does a coastline ever seem blasé? According to the road signs, Apollo Bay was only another 75km away. At first we thought this would be about an hour, but then the road became curvy. I couldn't help laughing whenever I'd see a sign indicating a speed limit of 80km/hr. Sometimes within 50m of this sign, there was a new sign warning drivers of the upcoming curve with a speed limit of 40km/hr!
Needless to say, the 75 klicks took about two hours. Not only did I have to go slowly through the curves, but I was also trying to see the scenery that I had to drive slower. Why wasn't Gerald driving then? Poor guy, his early mornings were catching up with him. He just couldn't stay awake for the life of him.
We were now on the Great Ocean Road. This road begins just outside of Geelong and will continue until Port Campbell along the southern coast of Victoria and South Australia. The bit that we completed tonight was truly spectacular. Basically, the road twisted along the coast, spectacular ocean and beach vistas on the left and lush forest or towering rock face on our right. Every once in a while, the road diverged from the coast and wound its way through the dense forest. So pretty. While driving, I had to chuckle about the posted speed limits. Sometimes within 20m of an 80km/hr sign would be a caution sign of 30km/hr for the curve. It took over two hours to complete 100km. It was very rare that we actually hit 80 klicks.
Around dusk, we pulled into Apollo Bay. This was about the fifth beachside town since Geelong. Despite attracting thousands of visitors every summer, somehow these towns have been able to maintain a small-town feel rather than a tourist trap. Anyways, having already feasted at McD's, we settled into the hostel and watched a great match of tennis.
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