Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

There are rules and responsibilities that exist in every band of travelers.  These range widely, even sometimes directly conflict, from group to group and can be as simple as “we switch off cooking dinner / doing the dishes every night” to “we only go out as a group so we can watch each other’s back” or even the hotly contested “we pay a little extra for creature comforts like AC” vs. “We live as cheaply as possible.”

Let’s go ahead and just table the “How is air conditioning OPTIONAL in the tropics?!” conversation until later.

Additionally many of these rules are unspoken, which can lead to confusion and occasionally unintentionally hurt feelings when one person violates another’s “unwritten rules.”

Unfortunately we ran afoul of such a situation with one of our traveling companions.  A member of our group was, well, not in 100% agreement on what their responsibilities were to the rest of us and without any form of notice, started just slacking off from time to time and not pulling their weight…

(…or our weight either for that matter…)

There have been some…disagreements…of late.

With The Beast, that is.

Not that it was all that easy cramming 3 grown adults into the cab of a 1988 Mitsubishi Triton for 8 hours a day even before this turn of events….

For close proximity family bonding time, The Beast couldn’t be beat.

But it really all came to head when The Beast gave us the opportunity to have yet another quintessential Australian backpacker experience …

Life Achievement Unlocked
Survive a car breakdown
in the Australian Outback.

Seriously, they make movies about this kinda thing.

I think the phone might get half a bar of reception over that next hill!  Mind the Dingoes!

Being as we got the achievement already and all, we figured rolling out into the great ‘Red Centre’ in a 15 year old used truck that didn’t always feel like starting and only, we discovered, ran on ¾ of his cylinders when he did decide to do his thing at all, was probably not the best way to get Chris to the Great Barrier Reef on a timeline, or, well…alive either.

So for $320.00 Australian we sold our less than reliable steed to the scrap heap.  And thus ends the tale of The Beast…and begins our adventures in alternate transportation.

About the authors

Greg and Tiffany are traveling around the world on sailing yachts and keep a video blog of their (mis)adventures.  If sailing to Tahiti on a 44 ft sailboat, 3-day delays for wine tastings, getting pooped on by seagulls, opening coconuts with dull machetes, sailing past tornadoes and ukulele Christmas carols are for you, then check them out at www.CoastGuardCouple.com!