Busing it

I'm always conflicted by taking bus tours of places.  On one hand, it's probably the cheapest and easiest way to see a vast majority of the local sights and someone else has to deal with the details.  On the other, it feels like a copout.  Aren't I supposed to be a Kerouacian figure with just a satchel on my back and my thumb out, trying to make my way in the big, bad world?

Why yes, I did read On the Road at a really impressionable age.  (And then I never read it again, which makes me curious how it holds up for the adult, tax paying me.) 

My terror of getting sunburned keeps me standing on the sides of roads for long periods of time (because what else could happen standing on the side of the road looking vulnerable in a foreign country?  Nothing, right?), so I decided to take a bus tour of the Great Ocean Road.

The Great Ocean Road, for those of you too lazy to google, is a stretch of highway along the dramatic Victorian coastline.  It was built by soldiers returning from World War I, and meanders from Torquay to Apollo Bay and beyond, about 250 km in all.  I was told I was not to leave Australia without seeing it.  

It is, in fact, pretty great.  It reminded me somewhat of the PCH in California, but we don't have the limestone stacks of the 12 Apostles, or Koala Bears just hanging out in trees.  There are pictures - which I still can't access.  Wi-fi is quaint here.  Web design an afterthought.  So I'm saving the details of the trip for later.

Travelling along the GOR was the first time I had really been outside of urban areas since I got here.  It was lovely to get out into the countryside; I'm leaving for Tasmania tonight, so I think that won't be much of a problem soon.

What really strikes me about bus tours is that you're stuck in a small space with strangers for a really long day (or days depending on the trip), 14 hours in this case.

I have a friend who insists on every journey, you need a nemesis, someone you can funnel all of your irritations of travel towards.  I generally don't have to search for a nemesis, they usually find me.  

A trio of French girls.  They were absurdly bright and giggly for so early in the morning.  And they clearly knew each other, since they got on at the same hostel.  They never stopped talking - not once in the entire 14 hours.  At first, I was impressed by the sheer amount of words they were generating.  By about hour 8, I was shocked they had anything left to say.  How had they not used all of the conversation in the entire world?

It is entirely possible that I can understand the language now.