A trip that was to be four days ended up being over in less than twenty fours hours. The day started with me doing my usual thing of departing in the dark. In fact it was still dark when I arrived at Cape Jervis.
I had been booked on the 0900 ferry after requesting the first departure of the day. I noticed there was one at 0700 and inquired about being bumped onto that one. No problems. Good start to the day. Here's a view of both Cape Jervis and Penneshaw from Backstairs Passage.
I'd been to Cape Jervis many times and wondered if the bit of land I could see in the distance was Kangaroo Island or just an extension of the Fleurieu Peninsula somewhere. This view from Cuttlefish Bay of Cape Jervis confirmed that you can see Kangaroo Island from the mainland.
I did ride a lot of dirt yesterday. The first of it took me to the island's most eastern point of Cape Willoughby where you can see this light station.
Williamson once scoffed at South Australia's lack of highways but I discovered a few more today including the Queens Highway in Porky Flat.
So what does the Queen's highway look like? She must be so proud. It also had a road closed sign on it so probably not capable of handling English weather.
The views from Prospect Hill (aka Mount Thisby) on the border of Pelican Lagoon and Haines was awesome.
The climb up here almost killed me though. I knew I was unfit since giving up football a decade ago but this confirmed it. This was taken halfway down. The kwaka is near the car.
In fact I was still panting as I rode through American River. I refuelled at Kingscote before making my way to Emu Bay and Stokes Bay. This was at the latter.
I was content that everything I had planned to do on the day and some of what I had planned to do thursday I did. I returned via Parndana to Kingscote to refuel for the next day, make my way to my accommodation and walk around town. This is where the day turned sour.
Bemused by the building as shown in the photo on my booking confirmation for the Ozone Aurora Hotel email didn't have a check in area I found it in another building on the opposite side of the road. I also couldn't find parking so asked about that only to be told to park in the street. Pfft, their website says free parking so you would assume they have something more than street parking (which is also time stipulated). I was more than cheesed off, didn't fancy leaving my bike in the street overnight so rode around looking at other accommodation in the village. Just about everywhere was the same. The Kangaroo Island Seaside Inn was the only place to have out of sight parking so I went to the reception to find the door locked, peered in and noticed every key was in the pigeon hole boxes for their keys. Riding around the back noticed not one single vehicle so guess they've closed up shop (covid related perhaps).
Reluctantly I bit my tongue and returned to the Ozone Aurora and went to my room. It was filthy. I went to the manager and he came and had a look and looked at it said housekeeping hasn't done this. So whilst he was sorting all that out I noticed this wasn't the room I booked either. I'd booked a bigger room so I could spread my stuff out and also overheard another staff member say I couldn't have the bigger room because they had a school coming or something. So not had they downsized my room but they didn't tell me before hand let alone refund the difference. Is that theft or fraud? By this time I was pretty incensed and one night may have grinned and bore it, but three with the parking issue as well figured I probably wasn't going to enjoy my stay there. I'd already been out to Stokes Bay and Pardana so knew there wasn't much out that way, most of what was west of that was destroyed by fire in the beginning of the year so made my way back to Penneshaw, changed my return ferry to the next service and came home.
Spot was playing up. It didn't pick up the portion of Emu Flat, Stokes Bay and Pardana. My other tracking device stopped at Emu Bay and didn't get anything after that.
Today I had planned to ride to Flinders Chase and paid for the National Park so disappointed not to be doing that. Not sure if I'll ever be back but can't see me doing it in the near future.
