A rainy day gets me in the mood to write again - Kangaroo Valley

On a rainy and cold day like today there isn't much one can get around to doing and so invariably you begin to ponder and think and soon over think about where you are in life and where this life of yours is heading. Now i needed to escape from this and so decided that even in this uninviting weather I will step outside with my current book in hand and head to cafe and read. This worked really well for about 2 hours and then I was back to pondering and thinking and over thinking.

I haven't been in a very creative mood and certainly haven't been in a writing mood, reason why it's been a month since my last post. That is not to say that I haven't gone anywhere in the last month, I couldn't live without my travels, I did indeed have a very fun and relaxing trip to this quaint little place about 2 hours drive from Sydney called Kangaroo Valley. This was the first weekend of May with my very own weekend getaway group of girls. So now since I seem to be in a better mood to write again (inspired by some brilliant writing on my friend's blog) I am ready to attempt to write about this escape.

The Kangaroo Valley isn't as popular a destination with traveller and tourists visiting Australia but is more of a getaway for Sydney Siders and Canberrans being that it is a convenient 2 hour drive from both cities. We began our short road trip on a Friday afternoon where the 6 of us managed to fit comfortably into one big van with some of us (aka moi) starting a bit early on the festivities of wine drinking. Now the drive there is pretty easy especially with all the current gps technologies we have at our disposal but somehow we managed to convince ourselves that we were heading in the wrong direction. At one point it just felt like a scene out of a thriller movie where these young beautiful girls are driving down on a dimply lit road, with fog in the sky and no cars around. All we needed to make to complete this scene would be a sudden action of an animal or crazy man jumping in front of our car and scaring the crap out of us. sadly to disappoint you this did no happen, though how great a story would that have made :)

Anyhoo despite it all we managed to find our very own cottage in the middle of the night at the Kangaroo Valley Golf & Country Resort. It was a beautiful wooden cottage with comfy couches and a big porch with heaters that did keep us very warm during the nights. Speaking of nights, all we did was eat, drink and talk and it was the best thing we could have done. In fact the second night there, we talked for almost 7 hours straight until the wine hit all of us and we began to retire one by one to our warm beds. Both the days were very pleasant and we got lucky with the weather as it was clear and we were able to go bush walking on both occasions.

But how I can forget the main event of the trip - to see Australian wildlife. I had never seen a kangaroo in the wild despite living in the country for 3 years and Lea wanted badly to see a wombat. So the both of us were on this mission to spot at least one before we headed back to Sydney. On Saturday while driving to our walking tracks we kept our eyes peeled to the road but there was nothing. Knowing that the best time for wombats is dawn and dust, our drive back to the resort seemed a lot more promising, et voilà, we were successful! We pulled over and got out of our car to take a closer look at what definitely had the shape of a wombat. It was dark alright and this thing was huge for a wombat and we were well a bit scared cause despite its size it moved freakishly fast. Anyhoo I will skip any further embarrassing moments experienced during this sighting but it is safe to say Lea could tick off Wombat from her list of animals to spot in Australia.

Me on the other hand only managed to see a mob of kangaroos really far away that day until I got lucky Sunday morning breakfast time. Sitting on our porch and having our last meal at the cottage we saw 3 really cute kangaroos hopping around right in front of us and that's when I could scratch off Kangaroos in the wild from my list :)

So all in all a very successful trip of relaxation, bonding and well Australian animal sightings.