First School Break-Day 5-Freycinet to Port Arthur

Wine glass Bay Beach is one of Australia's top beaches...or a top beach in the world.  I honestly can't remember which. I can tell you, from experience that it is beautiful!

We arrived with intentions to do the 6k hike down to the beach. In tourist time, this should take 3 hours.  Dave signed in and we were off!

We hiked up to the lookout and took heaps of photos. The view of the beach looks amazing from up here and I can't wait to see it!

As we hiked down to the beach, about a kilometer straight down a bunch of stairs that I have no desire to climb up, we chatted about how thrilled we are to have made the decision to come on this exchange now.  We have noticed that Australia likes to position some of her greatest sights in some pretty difficult to get to places.  We feel so blessed to be able to have our health on our sides as we take off to explore this beautiful country. We are also glad that we turned down the exchange we were offered in 2007, as neither of us has any desire to carry two kids chucking wobblies through this country!!!

So we're hiking straight down

and someone tells us that there is an 8k overland track back to the car park. It is obviously longer than taking the stairs straight up, but it's a more gentle hike.

The boys loved the beach.  All three of them ran around and played.  BigC dug and dug, thrilled to be in a big heap of sand. The beach is beautiful and the waves are amazing!  The water is much, much too cold to even consider going in any deeper than your knees.  Remember, the next closest land mass is Antarctica!

We opted to take the overland track to return to the car.  We had our Camelbaks as well as our lunch and we're not in any rush to start the 3 hour drive to Port Arthur!

The hike is a beautiful one, though it is certainly the path less traveled. We saw so much beauty that I don't regret the long walk for a minute!

This is the beach that just happens to be on the hike back. 

Here is the spot that we stopped to eat lunch.  

Here are the warnings signs along the walk.

These folks are not messing around at all!  We have been thrilled all along to own two Camelbaks and are strongly considering buying a bladder to go in my Lululemon Run to Work backpack that has a slot for exactly that.

Here is the Endomondo report on the hike.

If anyone wants to connect with us on Endomondo, just Holla at me.  After more than 13k and less than 3 hours of actual walking (I paused when we were stopped at Wineglass Bay and again for lunch) we were back.  Tourist time for this walk is 5-6 hours.  We signed out so that no one came looking for us (not that we actually ended up walking where we said we would).

We took off on our 3 hour drive to Port Arthur.  But first-an important stop for necessary supplies! (Photo of us at Freycinet wineries below)

We brought some Mudgee wine just in case, but found several whites here that we liked.

The GPS took us through about 20K of dirt back roads, or maybe there are no paved roads, who knows!  Our little waterfront cottage in Port Arthur is gorgeous!  Definitely our favourite so far!  It has a queen bed in one room, two twins in the other, a full kitchen and a nice big sitting area with a fireplace and fabulous waterfront views.