So we didn't quite make it to Alice Springs on Day 3 (Tuesday) as planned, but as we were stopping for dinner in the delightful town of Coober Pedy, we received concerning news from Ben's mum who had been checking shipping times on the internet for us. Apparently now we had to be in Darwin not by Friday but in fact by Thursday in order to get our car on the ship. This left us about 36 hours to drive 2100km. Over our emu pizza we discussed just getting the next ship and taking our time through Australia, but ended up deciding just to go for this ship.
We drove from 7am until 2am on both Tuesday and Wednesday, and eventually arrived in Darwin hot, sticky and exhausted early on Thursday morning. After having our Carnet checked by Customs, filling in all the paperwork and finding out the myriad of hidden costs, we went to the carwash to get rid of the 3000km of dessert and insects. While we were enjoying the spray of the hoses, we were approached by a couple of men who as it turns out are other overlanders driving from Sydney to France, in Darwin to get their vehicle on the same ship to Malaysia as us. For anyone who's interested, their blog is http://www.oldwayhome.wordpress.com/ .
Since the challenge of getting to Darwin in such a short period of time, and then the success of managing it, we have been enjoying travelling at "Darwin speed". We have done a lot of swimming and showering and sitting, with a bit of wandering and looking. We did visit a few markets over the weekend which Darwin seems to be known for, and went to the tunnels that were built during World War II to store oil in. We're loving hanging out up here, and are sort of getting used to the humidity after a few days.
No comments:
Post a Comment