Yondah II - The Return to Paradise

His two cents:

I've been waiting for this pretty much since we last locked the doors of this gorgeous place behind us. Bec had purchased the return trip as a Christmas present in 2009 (probably as much to shut me up about it as to secure a good time to visit, given how heavily booked this place is becoming), and I'd been counting down the days since.

If you've got no idea what I'm talking about, Yondah is a self-contained holiday home on the far south coast of South Australia's Yorke Peninsula.  I say 'home' advisedly, as to call it a shack would be like calling Bill Gates 'kinda well off'. This place has, to use the cliche, all the mod-cons - reverse cycle a/c, fully equipped kitchen, three bedrooms, a super comfortable lounge room with stupendous views over rocky outcrops that separate lush farmland from Investigator Strait.

Most importantly, it's pet friendly, meaning Jedi gets a week of jovial, bounding freedom followed by nights on his bed in air conditioned comfort. (Sadly for the cats, as poor travelers, it means a week isolated in the Adelaide house, with kindly visits from our good friend and neighbour Rachacia.).

As always, getting here was NOT half the fun. In fact, the getting here contributed almost no real joy to the holiday. In actual fact (what does that mean anyway?), it was a bit of a debacle. We ran far behind our intended departure time as I'd overslept and spent more time catching up on work I should have done in the week prior than preparing, and was still very much in my usual state of morning filth when Bec got home from a very early visit to Buzz (her horse). I pulled my act together, but we still managed to leave almost two hours later than intended. We also had to stop at the chemist (my fault) and bottleshop (my fault) and to get fuel and check the tyres (the car's fault) meaning it was about two when we were finally under full steam. Determined to defeat the night we drove through the 2.5-3 hour journey.

Apart from our usual entertainment at Jedi's joy at seeing farm animals along the way (he reserves a set of special faces for these moments - cleverly referred to as 'cow face', 'sheep face' or 'horse face' depending on the livestock in question) the journey was uneventful. We had the usual consternation over directions, largely because I only saw signs as we passed them, meaning we took the usual, less direct path to get here, but one which maximises the use of sealed roads.

Despite one ill-advised traverse via a dodgy dirt road we made it here in one piece and promptly unloaded our grossly excessive inventory. We took our exploding dog for a walk along the ridge above the beach, where he tried to convince us, despite chilling winds and descending sun, that it was a good time to go down to our private beach. We weren't tempted by the notion of struggling back up the goat track that leads down to our little beach enclave in the dark and instead headed back to a spot of reading, a pumpkin and bacon pasta and a quiet night in front of the TV.

Today is off to a very slow start - for me at least. I slept from about 10 till well after 8 (when Bec set off the fire alarm with steam from the shower) and have managed a measly 15 minutes of exercise. Bec on the other hand has been for a run with Jedi, which entertained him no end no doubt as he would have ran 3km for each of hers.

The day now beckons a great deal of not much; we haven't seen the sun yet, but that allows for a quiet day of reading, eating and sleeping. I can live with that.