Today was the second day of my Kangaroo Island tour, the "highlights" tour (normally people only do this part, or they do this part first). Since the tour wouldn't start until after people came on the ferry, I got to sleep in a bit later than usual, and enjoy a breakfast that was included at the hotel. I got some very nice eggs benedict with salmon.

The only people who spent the night at the Seafront Hotel were myself and an older woman. Around 9:30 our driver for the day, Adam, picked us up at the hotel and drove us down the hill to the ferry terminal. The ferry was still about fifteen minutes away, so we got to walk down the pier and watch the ferry pull in.

Unlike yesterday, today the tour bus was completely full. My seat neighbor was Carol, a woman in her 60s from New Jersey who was traveling solo in Australia. We started out by driving about an hour to Seal Bay, which is home to a colony of Australian sea lions. The beach and waters at Seal Bay are protected, and boats cannot anchor or fish there. We were able to walk with a park ranger down to the beach and get just a few meters away from some Australian Sea Lions. I think I ended up getting closer to the seals in Kaikoura, but the sea lions here were much more active: there were lots of pups chasing each other around. The ranger told us a lot about the sea lions. An interesting thing we learned is that they spend three days out at sea hunting food about 75km away from the coast, and they don't sleep the entire time. That sure explains why you always see seals being so lazy on land!

As we left Seal Bay, we pulled off to the side of the road because we found a wild koala in this tree. A large portion of the Kangaroo Island Koalas were wiped out by the 2019 bush fires, but it is still possible to see them in the wild if you look carefully. Koalas face a huge chlamydia problem, the disease is rampant in koalas on the mainland, but the koalas in South Australia are completely chlamydia-free.

We drove a few minutes past Seal Bay to Vivonne Bay. Lunch was at Vivonne Bay Lodge which is owned by the tour company. We had chicken salad which was very good. I sat with Carol, and a couple other people on the tour who Carol and coincidentally already met from previous tours: Rebecca, a Danish girl about my age who Carol had met on a kayak tour yesterday, and Michael, an older man from the UK who Carol had met on a wine tour two days ago.

After lunch we drove another hour to Flinder's Chase National Park on the western end of Kangaroo Island. The windy road here is iconic, the driver Adam joked that the builders were drunk when they built it, really it was because there was a naturally formed path here they were following. We stopped a Remarkable Rocks, which are a set of rocks that have naturally formed some crazy shapes due to erosion from the ocean waves. They were up on a tall cliff, so it was difficult to imagine the waves reaching that high. Remarkable Rocks had a lot of great photo opportunities.

We then proceeded even further west to Admiral's Arch, still in Flinder's Chase National Park. You walk down a boardwalk and around a corner and are surprised with an incredible view. There were a lot of New Zealand fur seals in the area, and we saw some very young pups playing (they couldn't have been more than a few weeks old). We didn't have a lot of time at Admiral's Arch because some members of the tour were late to get back on the bus at Remarkable Rocks, but it was incredibly windy so we didn't really want to spend long there anyway.

We drove about an hour back east and stopped at Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park. The park has a great display of Australian wildlife, including wildlife that is indigenous to Kangaroo Island. There was an enclosure with western gray kangaroos, and then next to it an enclosure with the Kangaroo Island kangaroos, which are a subspecies of the western grey. They are a bit smaller, darker, and more docile than the western grey. We were able to feed and pet the kangaroos, which was an amazing experience. They are somehow a lot more dog-like than you'd expect, and their fur is very soft. They also look so ridiculous when they hop around.

Other animals at the park included three famous pelicans that had been featured in the film Storm Boy, an echidna, some Little penguins (that is the species name), a serval, and a pack of dingoes. There were also a few koalas just hanging out in some low trees, and we were able to enter the Koala enclosure to pet them (but not on the head!) You could pay A$40 to hold the koalas, which is a total rip-off once you realize you can just pet them for free.

After an incredible experience at the wildlife park, we headed back to Penneshaw, making a brief stop again at Pennington Bay to see the view (it had not changed from the previous day). There was just barely enough time to buy snacks in the ferry terminal before getting on board for the hour journey back to Cape Jervis. The bus ride took a full two hours back to the Adelaide Central Bus Terminal because we made a lot of stops. Upon returning at 10:30pm, I was really hungry and not much was open, so I went to 18th Street Hot Pot again. This time I asked for my hot pot extra spicy (a 4/5 on their scale), which was a good spice level. I went back to the hostel and did laundry, meaning I went to bed unfortunately late since I would have to wake up very early tomorrow to fly to Alice Springs.