outback adventures: the desert that prevailed

wow, its been a while.

i am going to have to reach back a ways to give you the full story of this little adventure we have thrown together the past 10 days or so. ill begin by saying, everything that happened i could have never guessed.

last time i posted we were rounding the corner to head in to the outback. so we started heading over around townsville and began experiencing the desert for the first time..

initial observations:

"holy crap, we are drinking a lot of water" (10 - 15 liters a day and you only piss when you wake up)

"shit, it is real real hot here" (up to about 122 degrees hot)

my ipod crashed around this time which is a pretty big bummer. i guess i pretty much expected the little bugger to go out seeing as how i typically ruin one piece of electronic equipment per trip that i do. last time two times its been a camera, so why not diversify in to the ipod area?

we were hitting up all the small towns as we went along-- by small, i mean about 400 people in the town small. not too many people here folks. funny little quirk we notice in these towns are the staggering responses we get when we mention the volvo. apparently they are not looked to highly upon in australia. some common catch phrases for volvo drivers in australia:

1) only dickheads drive volvo's
2) whats the difference between a volvo driver and a porcupine? the pricks are on the inside instead of the outside!

ohhhh fun and games. those silly aussies. but they were serious. one guy wouldnt even let us use his gas station!

silly aussies.

and the roads we are driving on.. sure they call them "highways" but these things are 1 lane wide and it isnt unusual for you to be able to count the amount of cars that pass you by in any given day on a hand or two.

the sunets i should note are absolutely stunning in the outback.

so we get to this little town called mackay and we notice CHUG is dripping some oil. we look it over, bryan and i with our infinite knowledge of automobiles (coming from the motor city of course) assess the leaking as minor and continue on.

at a town called cloncelly (i think i may have messed the spelling) we wake up after sleeping and find that there is a decent (maybe a liter) amount of oil collected on the car beneath. we took it to a mechanic. given the fact that we had the damn volvo, the guy wouldnt look at the car but his partner secretively did and said we had a leaking tappen cover. he showed us how to make the repair and it would now be up to bryan and i to fix it. his parting words... "i would do the workfor you guys ubt my boss would kill me if i touched the car"

note to self: no more volvos. geez!

so we pushed on to mount isa, the mining capital of australia. we went to discount auto parts store and took out our detailed list of parts and sealants we needed to get. we must have looked pretty silly in there honestly. we didnt have a damn clue what was going on.

we made the repair in the scorching heat and pushed on.

it still leaked.... and leaked.... and leaked. all the way to alice springs. at this point, the car is smoking, the odor of engine burning is mildly intoxicating and both bryan and i are a bit disgruntled.

at alice springs we pay a mechanic to "fix" the oil leaking problem. $170 later we were on our way. we both felt pretty good and decided to keep going on to ayers rock now that CHUG had a new hair-do and makeover.

we got ayers rock which was really cool because we were able to climb the thing, something i hadnt got to do lasttime i was there. the climb was fairly difficult, but real neat at the top. the wind was blowing like hell.

after the climb, shit started getting real interesting with the car. in fact, ill just tell you.

the damn thing blew up. completely puked on us. CHUG saw his last days while trying to get out of the desert en route to adelaide.

there are a few twists. we heard the engine grinding and that was about the time we knew we were done. see now, we are in the middle of the desert... recall the statements about seeing no cars on the road, and the 122 degree heat.

ok, now do you get the interesting part? here we are on the side of the road, after the car has officially died bryan and i collectively have about a cup of water. "that should last us about 32 seconds in this heat" -- i believe that was my immediate thought. (see pic)

we were waiving the occasional passers by on the road down and trying to get their water off of them. we were actually successfull - five liters of water and two bottles of beer.

speaking of the beer... after we got the 5 liters of water, i figured we were ok, so i cracked one of the COLD beers. i think at that point bryan really wanted to kill me. this situation of clear and present danger was looming, but damn that beer looked tasty. i offered him the other one with no luck. it tasted good though.

eventually a trucker named graham picked us up off the side of the road and took us in to the nearest town about 100 miles away. that was cool. he was a real interesting fellow, and i have to say the young boy in me was very excited to be riding in a big 18 wheel giant truck.

once we got to the next "town" (about 500 people, a roadhouse and a supermarket) they wanted $500 to tow the vehicle in and get it off the road (otherwise, the police threatened we would have to pay a $1200 fine).

SHIT. that was the first thing i thought of. not having enough money was the second.

bryan and i agreed that we had to get crafty and get CHUG off the road without paying all that money. and well, we did. surprisingly, this german dude named holger popped out of the woodwork with a 4 wheel drive vehicle and offered to go back with us and tow CHUG in.

excellent.

we got the car and came back. we slept that night in the car, which saved us from having to sleep on the damn gravel. so that was cool.

the mechanic was quite surprised (and probably a bit pissed off that he was out $500) the next morning because we had managed to get the car back to town.

bryan and i now decided we needed to hitch hike our asses out of this place. and that we did. after about 4 hours of sitting on the side of the highway with a sign that read "ADELAIDE" (our destination) we finally got a bite. two finnish girls and their campervan. it was too good to be true. we had managed to get a ride south.

we loaded up and left, on our way south to adelaide. we stopped in coober pedy that night (which it should be noted... 85% of the worlds opals come from this area of australia) and camped with the two finnish girls and two swiss guys that were driving in our little "caravan." it was fun.

we got pretty drunk that night, i have to say. well deserved i suppose.

the next morning we left for port augusta-- this was where our ride was going to split off for perth and bryan and i would need to find a new ride to get down to adelaide. we were the hitch-hikers, but i ended up driving the whole way from coober pedy to port augusta. funny how that works!

when we arrived in port augusta it was kind of late and we camped by the water. it was definitely getting cooler which was very, very nice.

the next morning the finns and swiss left and bryan and i needed to find a new ride to get down to adelaide. they dropped us at a gas station and bryan and i got to work with our newly acquired nack for mooching rides.

dennis, a retired copper miner walked by about 5 minutes after they left. he told us he was going to adelaide the next morning. we would need to go to his place about 50 km away and then wake up early the next morning and leave with him.. sounded awesome. clearly, this was one of the more random occasions, but we were happy to take it! he was a real interesting guy, had been a copper miner all his life and now just had financial interests and "overseeing" power left in the company. we drove with him in to the south australian countryside to his place in the middle of nowhere. he showed us our beds for the night (first nights sleep in a bed!) and the shower (second proper shower of the trip thus far) and it felt like we were staying at the ritz carlton. he even took us out for dinner that night. what a guy.

the next morning we arrived in adelaide after dennis drove us down there. we bought him a kebab (he picked the place, i swear!) and told him if he ever came to the USA we would do our best to return his incredible favor.. he left, and bryan and i looked at each other smiling...

"what next?"

it indeed felt like yet anothre chapter was now beginning. here we had managed to crawl our way southbound and we finally made it to adelaide. and what was funny was that we arrived on the exact day we had sort of "pseudo planned" to with CHUG. amazing. it was like we had completely winged the whole thing, but yet it all worked itself out. this idea of just playing it by ear and kind of letting the road guide you as you go was demonstrated at its finest.

this concept of coincidence we talked about. why did the aussies hate volvos? was it a coincidence the damn thing blew up? not really. all things fell in to place properly, and yeah we are out $1800 but worse things have happened i suppose. here we were in adelaide ready to pick up and keep moving.

ADVENTURE AT ITS BEST.