Honeymoon: Phase 7: Back to Devonport

The bus took us through the western part of Tasmania that we did not think that we were going to get to see. It was an amazing with wild rivers and mountains everywhere on this drive. If I hadn't just spent five straight days backpacking, I may have longed to go explore it. Right now, in our smelly, wet, dirty state, the most important thing to us was a shower and a meal. Still we enjoyed the drive thoroughly as a huge waterfall poured down from the multi-colored cliffs that surrounded Queenstown, which was just a little nook of a town nestled within all of these mined mountains. The bus dropped us off across from a motor lodge where we got ourselves a not inexpensive, but very cheap looking room. We were stuck with two extra small twin beds, but we sure got our money's worth with how dirty we were to leave the room after unpacking and airing out all of our soaking wet gear. The shower worked great and we both got to be refreshed. We hit the town and filled our gullet with ice cream, pizza, and beer trying to quickly erase the positive effects of spending five days carrying a heavy load. We spent the evening in, but we were able to witness a strange event. The place that we were staying was being used for some big event for the high schoolers. It was complete with red carpet and everyone was dressed fancy. We still don't know what went on, but a large portion of the town was outside our hotel room enjoying the spectacle. The next day we took the bus again. It drove us first up to Cradle Mountain and then back down to Devonport. It made me very pleased that we had not decided to spend the trip riding buses. We showed up at the bed and breakfast and eventually we got in. We spent the next day and a half just wandering around Devonport eating some extremely good food, buying souvenirs, and even catching a movie at the movie theater. We were able to rent a car eventually which gave us a little more freedom. Our first order of business was to go to the miniature golf course. It was one of the more difficult that I have played, but in the last three holes I was able to take down Jacqueline for a resounding victory. We next tried to find a spot where each night penguins came out to feed their young. We drove around for a while and eventually found it. Jacqueline was lucky enough to spot a baby penguin under the deck we were standing on. We realized that we still had a while before the mom's would show up and it was getting chilly, so we made our way back into Devonport, avoiding a huge Christmas parade that was going on, grabbed our down jackets, and then back just in time to see the penguins. There were some volunteers there with red lights so that we could see them approaching the beach. The little guys just went nuts when it was feeding time and they peeked their little heads out to wait for their mothers. They were so incredibly loud and it was just an enjoyable experience to be there to see penguins in the wild. Funny, this was the latest we stayed out on our whole honeymoon making it nearly to 11pm. We knew we should get some good sleep, though, because tomorrow would be our last day in Tasmania before a series of boat, tram, bus, plane rides to eventually get us back to the U.S.A.