A beautiful Easter Sunday started with an acai breakfast bowl…
and excellent coffee at the Icaro WholeFood Cafe, across the street from our hotel. It had an Ashland Oregon vibe.
First stop was up a steep hill to the Mariner’s Lookout for a great morning view of Apollo Bay.
On the way back through town we had to stop for a pic of these cool trees along the beach. My identifier says it’s a Monterey Cypress.
Then on to the Maits Rainforest Walk, which wowed us. The size of the trees, the huge fern trees, and the Hobbit-like surroundings for us bested the Ho rainforest in the Olympics. I’ll try to to be selective with the photos.
Mountain Ash
We moved on to the Cape Otway Lighthouse. Along the way I saw the white flash of color of this bird, but didn’t see the flashy blue until we had stopped.
It posed for a long time, but failed to see anything funny, apparently.
We went on to the Cape Otway Lighthouse. The lighthouse was certainly picturesque…
and, as with so many sites here, the surrounding unfamiliar foliage was quite appealing to us, and will be included quite often.
A particular treat was just getting from one place to another, with the branches of unfamiliar beautiful trees providing a canopy over the road.
Took us awhile to get to the next place, the Otway Fly Treetop Walk, which was in a very commercial place with a zipline, kitchy enchanted forest, and other popular attractions, but which had a wildly elevated canopy walkway that also wowed us.
The “paths” were at least 200 feet off of the ground…
and there was a tower that went up an extra hundred…
and gave birds’ eye views of those below…
Not for the faint-hearted (or acrophobic) was a cantilevered stretch that suspends you…
and gently sways you, just for the fun of it, apparently.
I indulged in a souvenir cap in the gift shop because I mistakenly thought I had lost mine. Anyway, it will be a conversation starter.
After lunch in the restaurant here (our market-bought sandwiches with a token squirt and coffee), we spent a couple of hours doing stops and hikes in the 12 Apostles National Park – 8 gorgeous golden sea stacks (4 crashed spectacularly in 2009), off shore from cliffs of the same limestone. Again I’ll try to be selective.
We then had a longish drive to our hotel in Port Fairy, nearly meeting our demise when a car waiting on a side-road inexplicably drove out into our path after coming to a stop. Fortunately, the driver must have taken the trouble to look our way before getting too far out. I was able to swerve around its hood, thanks in part to the wide wheelbase of our zippy little turquoise MG runabout.
Re it, I think its choice for us may have been deliberate by the Melbourne airport Avis. Ninety-five percent of the cars here are white, grey, or black. Of the thousands we’ve seen to date, none came close in color to ours. Ideal for seniors in parking lots.
We had dinner in Port Fairy at a Tuscan place, outside, huddled next to an umbrella heater because there was no inside seating thanks to the Easter crowds.
Dana and Roger Travels 
Love the sense of animation of those twisted trees, And didn’t expect those handsome sea stack rock formations–new to me. Yes, wow!, on the elevated walkways. Any interest in the zip lining? Sounds like it may have been quite busy, given the holiday. Re: white cars–in Jubail in the 1980s, most cars were white because red was reserved for taxis, green for the religious police, etc. Ours was an older Cadillac (bigger to be safer with all the various understandings/interpretations of traffic laws) and copper colored. Like yours, easy to spot.
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Thanks, Janet. Fine, insightful comments once again. No interest in the zip-line. We’ve done it elsewhere – seems an excessive intrusion with the platforms and cables, and not that great a thrill.
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