On Thursday, we went on a local wine tour to some of the local wineries that had free tastings. We visited four wineries and probably sampled 10 wines at each. There were some really good ones! I used words like "spicy", "full bodied", "big", and "grapesque" in order to make it seem like I knew what I was talking about. I also tripled my previous wine knowledge! (read: none).
We paid $5 to get an actual tour of the wine-making process,which wasn't happening because it's out of season, but was still pretty interesting. I also grabbed some shots of the gorgeous rolling countryside.
On Friday, we headed up to Nelson Bay.
The area from a local lookout.
After a quick lunch of fish and chips, we hopped aboard a dolphin boat to head out and sight some dolphins.
The telephoto lens was fantastic for this! I was taking three pictures a second whenever there were dolphins around. I ended up with 678 pictures, and all of them have dolphin parts in them! My roommates all attempted to take pictures with their point and shoot cameras, and mostly ended up with pictures of splashing, thanks to shutter delay.
The deckhand told us that the dolphins know her because she goes out every day. Dolphins are very smart, inquisitional animals with great hearing. Clapping and whistling on the deck got them to come right up to the boat, but with us on the front of the boat and her on the back, they went right for her every time.
There's a net on the back of the boat that sits about a foot deep in the water. They allow passengers to chill in the net while the dolphins around. I didn't go out at first because I was taking pictures, but the dolphins came within a few feet of the nets. Cool.
They left the net out behind the boat while we cruised in. I hopped out there then...it was pretty cool, the water is pulling you into the net so hard, it's very hard to move!
After this, we headed to Warnervale farms, which is a petting zoo, more or less. The dangerous or large animals were in enclosures, but everything else, all the baby animals, were more or less free to wander. They were very, very friendly, and it was a lot of fun! I'm pretty sure the entire park was tailored to 10 year olds, but we all had a blast!
The girls wandered off and Nate and I played with some baby goats for awhile. We kept walking and eventually gathered a giant entourage. It was comical to see all the different animals chasing us....at one point, we probably had between 25 and thirty animals following us! This included four baby goats, some ducks, some geese, a cow, an emu and a sheep!
Stanley!
Furry Chicken!
Om nom nom, it are food time!
So lazy. nap time.
We finally lost this goat when it figured out how to eat with the big cows!
Texas Longhorn and one of the birds that always hangs out with these.
We headed to the spot where all the kangaroos were chilling. They, like most animals native to Australia, are ridiculously lazy and wouldn't really move. The cow would NOT bugger off and was constantly nuzzling Nate, trying to get at his food. He kept this up for two hours. I kept tripping on ducks and the goats were nibbling on my shorts.
This is part one in a two part series. Notice the duck eyeing up my food.
Part two. Notice the shocked look on my face, the chunk missing from my finger, and the smug look on the duck's face. Stupid duck!
DUCK STACK!
Wookie?!
The water buffalo know how to fit in!
Nate and some of our entourage.
Dingoes!
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