S M F G · A Counter-Clockwise Trip Around The World

Break Down

Aug 6th 2009
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Do you remember the infamous Murphy’s Law? It says that if something can go wrong, it will. This makes up for a pretty fair description of the last week.

It all started with me running over my telephone with the van — not that the telephone is of some use here in the outback: you only have network coverage in the cities. We were entering one of those cities, I was driving the van and it was already dark. I had just received a text from home (asking why I was not sending info), hence the phone was on my lap. We walked through the most complete obscurity into a poorly lit camping office for checking in, then we drove up to our dark assigned parcel. Here I discovered that my phone was missing, so I walked all the way back to the reception with a torch. And there I found it (see photo).

The next day we stopped at a beach for the night, and after a beautiful sunrise we found ourselves completely bogged! A couple of hours of insane try-and-error passed, and a group of friendly Aussie fishermen — with the bundled 4WD — arrived and just pulled us out, nice and easy.

We were all happy heading our way to Broome when a nasty noise from the engine compartment got our attention. The first thought was Oh, the radiator’s top hose just exploded! And no, not everybody is a mechanical engineer, so you guys stop laughing! :-)

Thinking we just need a replacement, I hitch hiked all the way to the next city (i.e. Broome, at 153 km), I bought the new part plus water, then I rented a car for the return trip (the sunset was near, and there would have been no more lifts, as very few people travel at night, due to the kangaroos having suicidal tendencies). But once the new hose was in place, it was immediately evident that our problem was slightly bigger: the water we just added to the radiator went out through the exhaust pipe. That it was not supposed to! The new picture was then: we are at 153 km from the nearest civilised place, the van has a cracked head gasket and it is packed with all our stuff, it’s dark.

Me not happy.


This post is filed under Australia, Oceania and tagged , , .

6 Responses

  1. AndreA says:

    mmm…..what a nice pictures….

  2. Ally says:

    Bad Luck!

    and now how are you planning to continue?

  3. Matta says:

    If the problem is only the exhaust pipe, don’t worry about: it’s sufficent an amercan tape, it will be ok …
    Nice to see you again after a long time I couldn’t follow you.

    Ciao

  4. marco says:

    no alpitour?
    hai ahi aih ai!

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