When we arrived in Albany we got a bit disappointed. Even though we arrived at the mechanics almost one hour before closing they told us to come back the next day. A bit annoyed, we made our way to a couchsurfing host, who let us stay for one night. Rachel was super kind and helpful (she allowed us to recharge our camper) and she offered us her self-made bread and self-made soup that were both really delicious. But she was extremely shy, so building up a real conversation was quite difficult. In contrast, her 5-year old son Liam was extremely active 🙂 and very clever what we saw. He learned counting in Italian by a former Italian couchsurfer and still could remember it. We tried to teach him counting in German, but after the number two he didn’t want to continue anymore.
The next morning, we drove our van to the mechanics. This time we weren’t rejected, but nobody could tell us when our van would be inspected. So we walked (rainy and 15°C) in the city center, to have a look at Albany hoping to get soon information about our van. We finished our tour through Albany the early afternoon (the city is not too big) and then we had to wait. After a couple of phone calls with the mechanics and our renter, we didn’t get any information until 4pm. Our renter promised us a few call-backs for which we are still waiting. Therefore we made our way to the mechanics to make a little bit of a pressure.
Arriving, we received bad news. One cylinder was broken and as the mechanics neither had the replacing parts nor the know how to repair the motor, it pretty much sucked. Now we were really happy not to have bought an own car. So, the renter had to look after the van, and we made our way to a motel for the night (with hot showers and breakfast), of course paid by the renter. The next day before breakfast, Tobi drove the camper back to the mechanics, where he was told that the renter wants a repair against the advice of the mechanics and the repair would take around 1 week!
So, we had breakfast in the motel and started to call our renter many times to get information about how he will handle this situation. Only in the early afternoon we got new information. We rented a car on their costs to drive to the national park in Albany and the next morning a new camper from Perth should be delivered. This meant we “had” to stay another night in the motel 🙂
With our rented car, we drove to the Torndirrup national park. Albany is a natural harbor and is almost completely enclosed by a half island, which in the same time represents the national park. It is mainly known for its steep cliffs and some of them contain blow holes. What happened is that the rocks were washed out by water up to the surface. If the sea is rough enough the water blows out through the rocks around 50m above sea level. Theoretically spoken. Unfortunately we weren’t lucky and couldn’t observe this phenomenon in live. But the cliffs itself were worth a visit.
There is also a really nice beach in Albany, but due to the bad weather we just spent a couple of minutes there.
The next morning at 8.30, the new camper arrived, with „only“ 550.000km and all 4 cylinders. We had to put all our stuff from the old into the new van, had breakfast afterwards and finally continued our trip towards Esperance, which is well known for good weather and amazing beaches.