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Otway Discovery

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stomps
stomps
First Reviewer
2 out of 5
Avg. Member Rating
1
Review
4
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Editor Pick

Otway Discovery

  • May 30, 2006
  • Rated 2 of 5 by stomps from Houston, Texas
Otway Discovery

The Great Ocean Road is obviously a huge tourist attraction, so there are plenty of options when booking a trip along it. Most buses leave from Melbourne, but you can leave from places like Ballarat, Geelong, and Torquay as well. Time is the major constraining factor when choosing a tour group—I would have loved to have pulled a Fraser and spent 3 days just touring around the coast and all the beautiful beaches, but unfortunately, my plane ticket back to Brisbane did not agree. Since all the tours I found were either 1 or 3 days (for returning to Melbourne…there is another whole range of tours that go the whole way to Adelaide), I chose 1 day.

Something that struck me when comparing all the 1-day tours was the vast range in pricing. I found tours that listed prices from $60 to $115. I would understand the discrepancy, but most tours seemed to offer pretty much the same thing—a 12-to-14 hour tour with various stops along the Ocean Road until reaching the Twelve Apostles. Some included a café lunch, but I don’t see how one meal can cost up to $50.

I ended up choosing Otway Discovery, which wasn’t bargain-basement cheapest but was also far from being the most expensive at $75. I couldn’t really afford much more, being in debt to my parents already.

The tour bus, which had the small capacity of around 13 people, picked up from various hostels around Melbourne starting around 7:15am. Since I was staying out of town with friends, I just found the closest backpackers to Flinders Street Station and hopped on there. Unfortunately, I soon found that the bus was entirely filled with obnoxious American students, of which I had already met too many as it was, and who all knew each other. I made a few attempts to speak to them, but found myself on the outside of a clique that liked to point out the window and say things like, “OhmiGOD, like, is that the Pacific Ocean?” I’m serious. I think it’s a very good thing I wasn’t part of that group, really.

The bus driver was a local to the Ocean Road—to the point that he would stop and chat to people in passing cars. Therefore, he obviously knew his stuff about the area and had a lot of interesting tidbits to share with us. However, he was not the best tour guide I’ve ever had—he was very abrupt and continually pointed out to us how slow we were getting out of the bus and how much time we were wasting. He was also mildly creepy in that he liked to touch people—he wrapped his arm around me as we were walking to the café in Apollo Bay, and I wriggled away as quickly as possible. I enjoyed the tour, which took us to many beaches, the Kennett River, Apollo Bay, and the Otway Rainforest before reaching the Twelve Apostles, but the general experience could have been much better.

From journal Wandering Along Australia's Great Ocean Road

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