We were up at 5:30; at least john was up making my tea.
He was not well, and EVEN didn’t eat….. He lay on
the bed while I packed up. We were supposed to be at Mercedes at 7am
but were a few minutes late. Glad we only had a ten minute drive even
by the tourist route. Johns navigation was a bit addled with his cold.
Handed our keys over and sat in the waiting area till 1300hrs when I then went
and made some lunch which we ate upstairs in the lunch room. Here we
could plug our computers in.
It
was interesting to see the guy re-groove the tires with a hot wire; a
physically demanding job. With discount the re-grooving of 4 tires
cost us A$500 They will see us to Turkey and maybe through Iran
depending on when our new set arrive from Australia.
The
handbrake shoe parts turned out to be incompatible; so ours were sent off to be shod, which held us up a few more hours. However at 16:00 the PR guy
came and got some photos of us beside EC by the Fuso bay. EC then
went back on the hoist for final adjustments.
Just
on dusk she was handed over with another big bill. But at least we
now had 4 new shock absorbers, tires with tread, and a handbrake. We
had asked the guys about camping at a lake and they said not a
problem so we headed there for the night, just 10kms north, Not
exactly quiet, as the city’s hum could be heard, but a pretty spot
for a city camp.
16km
16km