We are now on holiday! Yay :) Everything packed in the van without any hassle and Jess managed to squeeze only 4 pairs of shoes! Hahaha! (Thought I'm going to buy some more... - Jess) Set of on Saturday 8th Nov with 270925 km on the van's clock. First stop was Narabeen which is one of Sydney's Northern beaches to visit Jess' old History teacher, Karin and her family who moved out to Sydney about 4 months ago.
Had a 250 km drive to Fingal Bay - our first stop, and halfway there we noticed that the roof was banging quite a lot! Turned out that 2 of the screws that held the front of the pop -top to the roof had disappeared and the third was hanging loose! Was going to drive to the nearest campsite and sort in the morning when I got all MacGuyver on its ass and used our hammock ratchet straps to hold it down. It worked, but the only downside was that at 80km/h the wind made it sound like there was a guy playing a dijareedoo strapped to the roof. Nice.
Luke then got pretty excited that he finally had a totally valid reason to buy a drill in order to bolt the roof back on. I lay the smackdown on him that he is only allowed a small drill that fits into his huge tool compartment under one seat whereas I was only allowed to take 4 pairs of shoes. Aaaanyway.
Arrived at Fingal Bay too late for the campsite, so we headed back to Shoal Bay where we stayed.
First day was pretty grim. All cloudy and rainy, so Luke had to wear his Merrell shoes and geek rain jacket. He wasn't happy. We still went for a walk and the beach was still pretty amazing even in the rain. We spent the rest of the rain reading in the van.
Day 2 was lovely! Rain had cleared up so we decided to enjoy it by fixing the van :( Seemed like a good idea at the time. Bought a drill (oh yeah!) and some other supplies and started on the van. Seemed that previous owners had done a pretty bad job patching the rust and now it had come back with avengence. A whole day of scrubbing, rubbing, filling, sanding, wiping and spraying later and I want to throw the van on the dump. Jess was very good, helping out and keeping me calm so we did finally get it done! Looks 100 times better than it was - just need to drill the front and seal the roof and we are done! I hope that is the last we have to do because typing it is just as dull as doing it...
Day 3 - Sun is out again and we are planning on going for a snorkel later. Guy in the dive shop says it is the best snokeling in NSW and that if we go late in the day, we might get to swim with turtles and dolphins :)
