Tour Day Six

Today we are featuring a guest bloggist (blogger?). Eline decided that she would write the description of what happened on the terrible day six. This was Australia Day, the national holiday for the country. Despite the crappiness, we did what could to make the most of it.

Happy Australia Day! Thank you Aaron

I will tell your diary what we did on this day:

-sitting on the bus,

-sitting in the bus,

-listening to music in the bus

-sleeping in the bus

-being irritated by people in the bus

-played karts or carts at the bus (interjection, she means cards)

-relocated my shoulder on the bus

-being ennoyed by flies & Mirte&Eline in the bus

It was a great day!

To add some more important details of the day. Eline did a great job at pointing out the incredible monotony of the day. As you could guess from her version of the blog, we pretty much just sat on the bus all day long. We woke up at five, then spent 12 straight hours on the bus. We had just recently crossed the Tropic of Capricorn. We all had our Henry Miller and read all of our favorite passages (maybe not). We arrived at Karajini National Park in the middle of nowhere. The nearby cyclone caused excessive amounts of rain. Not that it rained continuously, but there was a two hour on, two hour off schedule that held for most of night. The flies were horrendous! I was thankfully given a fly net by Les. "There will come a time when you will need this; you'll know when." At first, many in the group were making fun of how silly I looked in such a thing, but after about 15 minutes, I recognized the looks on people's faces ("Aaron is a pretty small guy, I'm sure we could easily take him down, steal the net.")

We temporarily joined another tour for the night. Their guide was very disorganized. He took up all the tents, so our group had to be spread out. They left for the night to beat the potential floods hitting the roads, only to come back an hour later. Even though the camp had a kitchen area, the genius decided that putting the barbies in a tent and cooking fish in their was a good idea. The people who had to sleep in the fish tent were quite unhappy about that. Our meals were brought to the bus, where we ate in the dark. I couldn't see what I eating. We told that it was fish and couscous, but from what I could tell using only the texture and taste, we were eating weird chicken and really stiff pudding with capsicum in it. We all decided to have as little with the other group as possible after that.

The day had been horrible, and since Australia day is supposed to be fun, we through a dance party. Because of the rain and the fact that after 12 hours of riding, we had developed a special bond with the bus, we decided that it was the perfect setting for our new, bus-themed night club. Steve was our DJ (aka Karajini FM) and we literally rocked the bus. The guides had never seen such a site in their many years of tours. In the end, it turned out to be a fun day.

Special thanks to Mirte and Catherine for the photos and Eline for the blog.