Jindabyne, Snowy Mountains - a Lovely Little Mountain Village!

Yesterday in Gelantipy I set my alarm for 7am, but when nobody else got up for breakfast I thought maybe it was at 8am instead so I went back to sleep for a bit! Turned out it was at 7am, but we still managed to catch breakfast. We spent most of the day driving, stopping at Little River Gorge for a quick look and a photo. The other bus' trailer broke there so we sat there for about an hour slagging off Adventure Tours (mainly cos we didn't go to Ninety Mile Beach the day before when it's advertised in the brochure, and because they've reportedly taken Dingo out of their East Coast itinerary) while the drivers took a set of wheels off the trailer. The next stop was at Jack's Lookout, which had a picture-perfect view over the Snowy River. Apparently the Snowy River is a 'dying' river, and only 1% of it's potential capacity is flowing at the moment. So plans are in progress to leak some water into it from elsewhere. Good job too, cos it would be a damn shame to lose it.

We finally pulled into the delightful mountain village of Jindabyne at about 2pm, where after dumping our bags at the motel we made a beeline for the nearby kebab shop! The town is really cute and quaint - just what I'd imagine a little mountain village in either the US or Canada to look like, with its wood panelled buildings with little shelters over the ground level. And it's right by Lake Jindabyne, which is framed by the Snowy Mountains. I'm so glad we decided to stay here instead of Gelantipy, cos it's much nicer and there's a lot more going on. We passed up on the 10km hike up Mt Kosciuszko, Australia's highest peak, simply because I couldn't be bothered hiking uphill for 5km. That's too much. I know the views would've been worth it but, frankly, I just couldn't be arsed.

Instead, we had a mooch around the town. We found our hostel for the next couple of days and phoned around to try and find someone to take us abseiling down the Jindabyne Dam. I still don't know what's going on with that - a guy is supposed to be getting back to us. We've planned it for our last day anyway so we got time to sort it out. Then we went back to the motel and went in the pool and sauna with a few of the other guys who'd stayed behind. Our motel was great actually. We had a TV, fridge, tea and coffee making facilities, and - get this - a BATH. It was so good to get into a nice, hot bath for a change!

Practically everybody had the $6 chicken schnitzel in the motel bar for tea, with loads of gravy! Afterwards a few of us nipped to the bottle shop around the corner and spent the night in our room having deep conversations and getting slowly sozzled. It was very enjoyable! In fact, we had a really good group as a whole - it wasn't as cliquey as some groups have been - so it's a shame we weren't travelling any further with them.

This morning I felt slightly rotten (I'm thinking from the early start rather than the 5 glasses of wine but think what you will!). The breakfast at the motel was our first cooked one yet on a tour, so that was great. You gotta love hash browns! After waving everyone off we trundled over to our hostel, laiden down with heavy bags, and checked in once the reception opened. We also spotted a flyer on the counter for a local company, advertising three activities for $50, including wakeboarding, hot dog riding (which I think is like a banana boat), waterskiing, sailing, canoeing. So we've had a wander over and booked in to do all of the above except wakeboarding this afternoon (one of the crew on our Whitsundays trip nearly pierced his lung with a broken rib doing wakeboarding - scary).

We'll probably spend the rest of this morning doing some food shopping and having a wander down to the lake cos we haven't really seen it yet. We also spotted that Miss Congeniality 2 is on at the one-screen-cinema in the Visitors Centre tonight, so I'm thinking we'll see that tonight - can't wait! On our last night in Melbourne we did end up going to the flicks with Jenny and Becky, to see Hide and Seek with Robert De Niro. That was a freaky film. Anyway, plans for the rest of our time here include white water rafting tomorrow, and hopefully abseiling on Sunday. We'll see, and I'll let you all know how it goes.

That's all for now, so take care!

ps. Guess what - we'll be home a week on Wednesday. That's in 12 days. Aaaaaaaaaaaaagh!