We are now in Port Macquarie at the Backpackers. We were going to Camp here, but the price different wasn't much different for our own room at the Backpackers and at the camp ground. So the choice wasn't very hard. Hot shower and a comfortable bed! We sort of only biked 65 km today. but it felt a lot longer. 34 km of the road was dirt road and it makes it so much harder and slow to bike on, it is more peaceful than the highway and you get so see a lot more on the country roads so we still prefer the dirt roads.
Yesterday we left Forster around lunch time, so pretty late. but we decided to have lunch there at a beautiful cafe near the beach and i had to visit a bike shop to get my bike shoes fitted, after that we biked to Taree and had lunch there in the park and a good stretch.. We biked around 30km to get to Taree and left around 4pm to go up to Johns river to camp. about 40 km away. It gets dark very quick here and again we were biking in the dark along an empty road. after 20 km Jakob got flat tire,. We had a bit of trouble to fix it, Not easy when you can't see anything. When we were about to leave somebody in a car pulled up next to us and asked if we were okay and yes, we were fine. he said that they got worried when they saw the torches and light up the road, apparently someone in the area got rubbed the same day, anyway we started to talk to him and he told us about camping grounds nearby them if Johns river felt to far away in the dark. We wanted to go all the way up to Johns river but then he offered us to stay at his place in a little cottage with hot shower, again the decision was easy, who says no to a hot shower! He only lived 200 m away with his family, nice little property. We got our own litte home there with bathroom and everything. had a hot shower, made our self a steak and went to bed. The next morning we woke up pretty early and got invited for breakfast. Scramble eggs, toast and tea and very nice company. We stayed there till 11am, talked about everything. they told us about the area around and how beautiful mountains they have and stories when they been travelling, we showed them on a map were we lived in Sweden. I could even point out Färgelanda on the atlas he had. Fargelanda is a really small town in Sweden where i'm from. He told us about an really cool experience in Africa when they got to hang out with wild gorillas, i wanna do that.
It's amazing how nice people is here and it's so much fun meeting new people. Everytime we stop it's people coming up and talking to us.
We were on the bikes around 11am today and did an 34 km ride on dirt road which took us ages, and Jakob got a flat tire again,?! Probably the slang we changed to yesterday was already broken, so we had to change again. its annoying because all the tools is down the bottom of the bags etc, ready to go again.. and Jakob pretty much jumping on his bike and it's flat again! wtf.. we were running out of air patrons too, only had one left. So again we had to unload the bike and swap tire etc. We decided to visit the cycle shop in Laurieton a small little town on the coast, we had 20 km to get there and ask them to check the tire etc., didn't make sense why we got flat tire straight away after fixing it. They said it was all good, we went to coles bought lunch went down to the river and ate lunch and when we were going to leave Jakob had flat tire again. grr.. We had to unload the bike swap tire again,, and after that we had 35 km to Port Macquarie were we staying now., again it was really dark to bike so late.
Jakob had a little fall with his bike on the dirt road to so he is feeling a bit sore.
Tomorrow we thinking to visiting the Koala hospital here in Port Macquarie and get a massage and after that we need to get to Coffs Harbour., We are going to stay with someone that lives just before Coffs, so we probably have to bike a little bit tomrrow and then maybe do a short Train trip to get there in time.
. How cool is all the bats! this is in Forster it was hundred of them in one little area.
//Gina Johansen xx