go west handbook – the blog

The Grand Canyon

On the road early, weather was a bit overcast. We set off on the short trip from the campsite to the Fort Escue Falls. It was a steep climb down but no problem to us seasoned hill walkers! Finto aka Danny Divito from The last of the Mohicans skipped on ahead. The waterfalls were absolutely quality Finto, Gino and Nigel didn’t waste much time and barrelled into the water. It was absolute Baltimore as Gino would say! I think gets Baltimore confused with Baltic but none of us have the heart to tell him.

Willies were about to get a whole lot smaller,but not as small as steves

Darren was forced to sit this one out with his gammy foot, Steve just wasn’t bothered. So they watched on bitching about how crap Liverpool were playing and how wrinkly there Liverpool tattoos would be by the time they won anything worth a shite. After an hour freezing our balls off, we took the trek back up the gorge. We thought we were doing pure Bear Grills stuff until we met an old woman on a crutch heading down towards us.
We headed off on the road to Joffre Falls it was basically a 35k long rumble strip. We were forced to drive below 20km most of the way with one wheel on the verge to stop the cars from falling to bits. We had to let the air out of the tyres, no point in fuel economy without a back axel. Darren couldn’t have picked a worse day to start driving but he took it all in his stride. We arrived down to the pool at another gorge they were a little shallow for swimming so the stone skimming competition began. It was a photo finish between Darren and Finto for the most hops but Darren was lucky to be still in the competition after nearly amputating Nigel’s leg from the shin down with a dodgy early attempt.
We opted out of getting fleeced the 15 dollars for the 15 minute internet access and headed on to Oxer’s gorge and again it was spectacular stuff! We met two crustys on their way back from there annual wash. Soap Hating Bastards! We also seen a Hornet, mad looking things. They are know to carry away babies! After Nigel tried a dive bomb off an 8 foot ledge into a 2 foot pool we decided to call a halt to the tourist stuff.

Economy Bungee Jump Minus the Bungee

We drove about 5K when the Magna started slowing up. It was out of petrol but luckily the two well prepared baby wipe sharing bastards from Dundalk took the crazy decision to bring a spare can! We topped it up and Darren tried to start it there was a serious knocking sound coming from the engine, not good at all. We checked the dip stick, not Steve Craven the lad who spent 7 years in the motor trade but the thing used to check the car for oil. We tried putting oil in hoping that with the engine still being hot it might not be completely ceased but no such luck it was fecked. Stranded by the side of the road, a jeep with 3 fine young things pulled up to see if we needed help. Of course the clever boys that we are we waved them on!

Stevie '7 years in the motor trade' Creaven checkin for oil....

We decided we would try to tow the Magna with the $400 1984 Turcel. We weren’t holding out much hope, it was 80k to the nearest petrol station, getting dark and both cars were as full as tinkers bras. We took up positions with Nigel driving the Turcel, Gino up front on kangaroo watch, Finto steering the Magna, Steve reading the Haynes manual for Mitsubishi Magna’s wondering what went wrong and Darren in the back reading his book on the war in Iraq. That’s right they go to war for the stuff, its kinda important!
We pulled off very slowly trying to ease the strain on the Turcel. At first it was getting it very hard to pull the magna at anything above 40k in second gear. It wasn’t looking good we feared that the Turcel might end up goosed like the Magna. We were about to pull over and stop when we finally started heading downhill. We were soon tearing down through valleys at 100k, at night with an overloaded magna 5 feet from our rear bumper. Gino’s kangaroo spotting job soon became pointless. If one did jump out in front of us we would just about have time to scream like little girls and no more. The trip down through the valleys was nerve racking to say the least. We couldn’t afford to slow down on the downhill sections because they were usually followed by uphill sections, a bit like a rollercoaster but completely different. So were ploughed on and after about 50 minutes we could see the lights of the petrol station off in the distance. We rolled into the petrol station buzzing because we had made it. It was like reaching the top of Mount Everest but completely different and a lot warmer!
We headed into the service station to get a bite to eat and discuss tactics. We knew that there was no point trying to fix a blown engine in a car worth $1000 on the remote west coast of oz so that was ruled out straight away. So it was either report it stolen or dump it. We got chatting to a sound Kiwi who told us of a place to dump it not far from the petrol station. We decided to put all the stuff we could do without into the magna and tow it to the dump. Nigel, Finto and Darren took on with the task.

Taking the Number plates off before we dumped 'the smegma' into a farmers field

Darren was just along hoping that he might get to torch the car the vandal that he is! We dumped it without a hitch and headed back to the campsite for a well earned sleep. It was by far the most eventful day yet on the west coast trip.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 5:02 am and is filed under Irish go west. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.