At the Cousins

So! Here we are again! We are back in Australia and away from the craziness of Bali. We will be back there I am sure. We had a wonderful time, but it is certainly nice to be back in a place where you can walk down the street and not be accosted or have to worry about falling into the sewer.

We spent our last few days in Bali after Padangbai back in Ubud for two days then back in Kuta. In Ubud we stayed in the very wonderful guesthouse Rena House, and had a lovely time there. We met a woman from South Africa who was staying there and we spent heaps of time chatting with her about travel and the world. It was good fun. We also had lunch a couple more times at our favorite lunch place on Jl Bisma.

Since the airport is right in Kuta we went back there for the last two days. The first night we stayed at the very lovely and decently priced Serrella Legian which we had been to the first three nights in Bali. The last night we splurged and got a really nice room at a 4 star place in the city. It was suuuper nice. It was the kind of place that serves you a welcome drink on the way in and then someone takes your bags to your room. It was a pretty cool place to spend the last day.

The flight back was great too. On the way up it had been dark the entire flight, but on the way back down we left early afternoon and landed just before sunset. We drove back to the caravan park in Freo for the next couple nights exploring Freo and seeing some of our friend before heading off to where we are now.

We are at Angies cousin's house in Kalgoorlie. It is quite a nice place to be. We were expecting super hot temps, but they are having a cold snap this week (highs of low to mid 30s instead of the 40s). It is really nice to just spend the days playing with the kids and relaxing in the pool.

The drive out here is kinda neat. The 600kms from Perth follow the 30 inch water pipe that brings water all the way from near the coast to Kalgoorlie and all the towns in between. It is just amazing how tenuous a link it is! If it breaks the towns have about 48 hours of water in reservoirs but then they are all out. It started operating in 1903!

We are also upgrading the van a bit as we have acquired a second battery so we can run the fridge and things overnight! Yay! We have also had a chance to do some little niggly bits of maintenance and fixing uping.

A pretty cool thing here that we have seen is the Super Pit. It is a huge open pit mine just to the south east of the town. It is massive and so deep! It is really cool watching the 200 ton dump trucks crawling like ants from the bottom to the top. Such a huge hole in the ground.

We are finally getting a bit of a christmas feeling here too. There are cookies and a tree and giftys. It is really weird though how it is hot.....

Anyhow, I am going to jump in the pool now!