Via Barossa Valley to Marion Bay, Yorke Penninsula
On this day, the dashboard of our rental car from Europcar squeeked. It had reached its regular service interval. Fabulous! Do you blokes check the cars when you hire them out for required service or technical deficiencies? I guess not. Let the customer do the testing. Great learning you took over from the software and now “app” industry.
Alright, let’s call the call center. “Simply go to the nearest Europcar station, they’ll exchange the car for you!” a friendly lady said with a slight Indian accent. We did. The nearest Europcar station was very courteous and sent us to the farthest Europcar station at Adelaide Airport. There we got a new replacement car. Four hours of the day gone. We are way behind schedule. Thank gracious, I selected ‘late arrival at 9pm’ when I booked our stay for that night in Marion Bay.
So we rushed to Barossa Valley at 110 km/h — yawn! I know why they have these ‘sleepy driver’ and ‘power nap now’ signs all over Australia. Driving at round about 100km/h for hundreds of kilometers will make you drowsy – no chance it wouldn’t. Strangely, I never become drowsy on German highways traveling at least twice the speed – also for hundreds of kilometers. Anyway.
In Barossa Valley, we had to tighten up our schedule. The visitor center did a nice job recommending a quick route with just the highlights: Bethany, for the view, Penfolds in town, Two Hands further out and Murray Street vinery on the way out to Marion Bay.
We followed that plan, except for Penfolds, which we had to skip due to time constraints. The wines are phenomenal, but pricey as the ones in McLaren Vale. The valley appeared to be a bit more ‘cosy’ than McLaren – although this is a completely subjective impression. In case you happen to be in the area, it’s definitely worth a visit.
After a few hours drive north and then south-west bound on the Yorke Peninsula, we arrived four minutes before 9pm at the caravan park site, where we had found a cabin for two nights. The reception was dark, the ’emergency contact number’ said “the person you have called is not available”. But there was light around the corner, which seemed to be the resident managers home. I lurked around a fence, with a large “beware of dog” sign on it and stood on the porch looking into the living room of the resident manager’s home. I carefully knocked the glass door. There was a whirl on one of the sofa’s and a lady in her nightgown scuffled to the glass door.
After I apologized several times and explained my case, she said: “I expected you tomorrow. – I’ll come around and open the office.” – In the office we checked the booking details and indeed, they confirmed our stay for today with arrival at 9pm. We got the keys for the cabin, unpacked the car and slept in the cool breeze of the nearby ocean.