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

Stuck!

Aug 19th 2009
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Stuck in the middle of nowhere. We somehow managed to bring the van in a rest area that was a few kilometres back, and there we spent the night. In the morning, while one was back in the city with the rented car looking for somebody to tow the van, the other two packed everything and hitch hiked to Broome.

There the news was less than exciting: they wanted 1500 $ to tow the van to Broome. Pretty much the value of it! We eventually decided to rent a 4WD and tow the van by ourselves. And in only two hours for going back to the place plus other three and a half for actually tow the damn thing we were back to civilisation. But it was already Saturday night, and the meeting with the mechanic was on Tuesday morning.

We were facing then a completely new task: park the van somewhere close to the garage. Somewhere safe! Since all of our stuff was still there, we eventually decided to spend the night in the van. And this is when in the middle of the night a rather violent earthquake woke us up: three completely drunk guys were having a very good time shaking the van — and us inside it — with a forklift!

I would rather skip the memories of that night, but just for the record let’s say that in a few hours we talked them into letting us stay for the night, after towing the dead van in a dark dirty muddy road in the backyard of the garage.

On Tuesday the guy at the garage told us the diagnosis: 2500 $. So good old poor Bruno (the owner of the van) decided to just sell the corpse. That took the entire next week. After over ten days in Broome, the fastest way to get out of there proved to be a relocation deal: a three-days 2000 km ride, at the tempting price of 1 $ (one!) per day :-)

And here we are in Darwin, looking — again! — for a lift to the south (i.e. the National Parks, then Alice Springs).


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

6 Responses

  1. AndreA says:

    WORST THAN IN EGYPT AND INDIA.

  2. Ally says:

    Well you’ve been stuck in the middle of nowhere and I am surviving a tipical English summer (yesterday I have turned on the Heating!)…

  3. Buck! says:

    “All’s well that ends well”…
    Happy journey!

  4. a-l-e says:

    U’r on the road again?!? XE BEN!!! :-)))

    1- …but…does the “old poor Bruno” bought another car? ;-)

    2- …big rock…I heard ’bout people kidnapped by the aliens near the rock…pay attention!!!
    uaahahahaaaaa….(scary laught)
    (…and don’t think ’bout Murphy’s law!!!;))) )

  5. AndreA says:

    when can we chat?

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