2020-02-01 Day 446 Sat


John went out to get his morning camp photo then came back for me. It seems it is normal to sleep in ones vehicle. He came and got me and we went back topside sheltering behind the exhaust in the warmth. We travelled closer to port, then slowed, then stopped. We were waiting for a docking place. We returned to EC and made breaky.

Finally we docked. Cars were off first so it was not long before we were also rolling. They put us on the lift then loaded a bigger vehicle behind, which was a little too large, and bumped us or at least our bottles in the rubbish bag. After being lowered a bit we then needed to roll forward so the truck could come back a bit and fit. Any how we got down and then checked but no damage.

We parked and headed in for customs and temporary import/vehicle registration. I noticed they did passport fist. We made a major mistake and both went to PP loosing our spot in line. We were the last to have our vehicle registered and finally left the dock at 12:30 after losing one hour to time zone….

In Tuscue John could not get his voda phone SIM renewed as it was not working. So he was sent to Turkcell and bought 25GB for AU$25. we should have enough for 3 weeks.

We have decided to retrace our track westward as there is a lot of snow up high and the track inland goes up to 1300m and we also will retrace our track back down to the coast.

We were looking for a toilet to save digging a hole. Our map indicated there was one at some caves. Well what a fantastic cave. After dealing with the toilet we then bought our ticket and headed down the ramp not having any idea of what we would find. An amazingly large cave. We walk down 4 flights of stairs about 100 steps above the ocean to the entrance and then went in and down another 600 steps or so. Amazing stalactites and stalagmites. With a fresh water pool at the bottom.

When we emerged an hour or so later we were needing a camp.














































We drove all over the point but could not find a camp














We are still amazed at the number of hot houses.
 
We retraced all of our previous route from mid Dec 2019 then really struggled to find a camp. The new highway has cut a lot of tracks off and we could not find how to get onto them, especially once it got dark. We explored a number of tracks in the dark then returned to one we had seen earlier. Our camp was on the old main road close to a rockfall blocking the road.












303km  Camp site  260m alt.