Over Land Archives - Page 20 of 20 - Round the World by Bike

We nearly felt like adopted from our farm family and enjoyed X-Mas á la Aussi very much. Christmas Eve we were invited to Crayfish from Jill and Eric – hmmm, so yummy – and even Santa passed by with a new shirt for each of us (so we are proud owner of unpatched shirts again ;-) Jill was always dreaming of the German “Apfelstrudel” and Kerstin did prepare one as a X-Mas present: “showing them how a German Apfelstrudel looks like” HaHa…the result out of the oven looked impressive but not at all like a Strudel ;-) at least the taste was not too bad.

The next day at afternoon we went to town to join their big family meeting having some drinks and nibbles to eat here and there. The last Christmas day we spent with the other part of the family at the beach having some more drinks and afterwards playing pool, dart, dancing with a couple of more drinks and eating prawns… ;-) All this happened within a heat wave and mostly we had around 45° C at day and around 28°C at night… and honestly we were not always feeling really fit when we woke up… But we really liked this type of X-Mas and they did not leave us much room to feel homesick.

In-between Kerstin had time to look after her little garden. It is just amazing how fast everything is growing here. We do have every day fresh herbs for cooking like basil, thyme, rosemary, chili and many many delicious water melons!

New Year’s Eve we spent on the veranda overviewing the valley with part of the family… eating delicious and of course sharing some drinks… Now it will be time for a diet soon or we will not fit into our motorbike clothes anymore ;-)

Cinema… a luxury we do not allow our self that often. But as they were showing “The Hobbit” in 3D we could not resist. We really enjoyed it, especially the memories we have when we saw the landscapes of New Zealand again…

The Cyclone Narrell took our attention for some days… We were facing some weird weather like fog, cloudy days with strong winds or without any movement or any bird whistle which was actually the scariest – just total silence with no movements. We could watch some incredible cloud walls and were prepared for the worst… But in the end of the day we were lucky again: Narrell just passed by more or less harmless for us. So far we were never really facing one of these dangerous nature powers like fire, flood, storms and we certainly hope it will stay like that!

Now after staying 3 ½ month on the farm we honestly get ready to go on the road again. Even though it is hard to imagine on one hand we are also excited of the upcoming part of journey on the other hand. Somehow the farm became like a home for us – we never stayed in a place that long before and we definitely will miss the people. For sure it will be hard and hot in the beginning; back on the road with a full loaded bike and all the gears again…hurting bottoms… ohoh. “Don`t be a princess” or “go to the Hardware Store and get some HardenUP!”the Aussies would say! If nothing goes wrong we will hit the road around the 27^th and we will not have that often phone or internet connection anymore. But we will try to catch up as soon as possible. On the way to Tasmania!

See you mates!

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And a BIG THANKS to everybody we met on our journey so far!!!

35°C, blue sky, sheep, kangaroos, the ocean and a little Christmas tree on the table ;-)

Looking back to an amazing year we are enjoying our farm life for the time being. We experienced so much, we have seen so many places, countries, cultures, and we met incredible lovely people all over – we really appreciate this break here to recap and going back in our memories…

Even though we are already travelling much slower than the most other bike travelers sometimes we wish we would have stayed longer in certain locations or we would have spent more time with the people we met. We did not experience anything really bad on our whole journey so far – touch wood!!! The opposite: We received so much help from so many people all over which gave us strength and hope – even in tough situations. Indeed we do not regret any second!

What is really amazing too is that we spend nearly 24 hours a day together the last 14 month and we are still happy together!!! Of course there were as well moments where we would like to slaughter each other… but these were only moments ;-) Truly we even feel strange when we are separated for more than an hour meanwhile. “True love!” ;-)

As well it is nice to realize how little you actually need… Still we are on the road with our first equipment more or less. OK some items are nearly falling apart meanwhile but most of it we could repair. And here we have the advantage to get proper tools to do so. A sewing machine provided by Gil gave Kerstin the chance to patch almost everything. All kind of tools are available here for us so we could manage to do some maintenance at our motorcycle as well. Sascha did well! He changed the steering bearing by himself. The biggest challenge here was probably that we run out of power caused by a thunder storm after everything was taken apart. Parts were spread around in the middle of the shed in-between all the olive barrels. And Sascha needed to grind before we could continue… In the end we could use Eric’s generator which just produced enough power to run the grinder. But now it was dark already and we had to put the bike together with head torches as the only of source of light. Happy we finished in the middle of the night; we left the shed just to see the power came back some time ago ;-) Also Sascha took the chance to give him a welding lesson. And after some practice he welded our panniers holder! This rack has been welded about 18 times. In Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia (a BIG thank you to Sunny Cycle in KL once again!!!) and finally in Down Under. I hope this was the last time now!

Kerstin became a Christmas Elf helping to prepare hampers full of olive products and Sascha had time to maintenance the bike. If the weather is right we go fishing and spend the night at the beach, we do some sightseeing in the nearer surrounding or just meeting up with friends for some beers.

What is coming next? No detailed plan yet. We will probably leave our “farm life” behind beginning of next year and as we are really keen to see Tasmania – we will head direction south. It is just 4500-5000 km from here to catch the ferry… Around the corner ;-) Anyhow you will read from us soon.

WE WISH YOU ALL A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR. As well we want to take the opportunity to THANK everybody we met and we hope to see you all again – when and wherever!