Sunday, 1 December 2013

First couch sit EVER!

So after our massive coach/train/bus trip we finally arrived at our first couch sit ever!

There was a sign on the door which said something along the lines of 'I'm homeless please help' which in our tired travelled state really confused us! But we knocked anyway and were greeted by Ricardo! He showed us to the back where there are tents, a trampoline a hammock and two punching bags!



We set up the tent which they leant us and then chillaxed with Ricardo. He's a really nice guy, he is from Italy and has travelled round Australia for two years ish. He started by travelling around with two other Italians, but he didn't know any English and he was only speaking Italian, so he decided to go off on his own and learn English! His English was really good, I couldn't believe he hadn't been learning it for years.

Later on we met David who is French and has only been in Australia for a week. He was burnt really really badly, but was also really friendly.

I got a real kick out of sitting at the table with them, just because it meant that there was an Italian, a Frenchman, a German and an English woman all sat at one table in Australia.


Sunday 1st December 2013 
We woke up really sweaty and sticky - I can't even remember the last time we went camping so I forgot all about that.



Anyway we walked to Coles and bought some food, I never thought I'd be excited to see Coles prices but after three weeks of overpriced Hopetoun foods it was a dream come true! Bread went from $3 to $1 woo.

It was really bizarre being in Coles because they had Christmas music playing! I'd forgotten about Christmas really and it is really hot so doesn't feel like December.


We went to Swan River to hang out:

it's Perth in the background



There was a nice big park, which reminded me of Cheltenham.

We went back to pack a bit and the cat Tequilla came into the tent: 







she's proper cute. 

That evening we got to meet the people who actually live in the house! They had been away for the weekend at Margaret's River. 



We met: two French girls, our host Stef who is half English and half Italian, her German boyfriend, an Australian guy, a Malaysian guy and his Swiss girlfriend,  an American girl, a Swedish girl and another Italian guy. So including Ricardo, David, Tbay and me that put the house total to 14 with enough nations to start a convention!

Six of them live there full time and have their own rooms. The French girls were sleeping in a tent in the garden but had been there a week or so (like David and Ricardo). The Swiss girl and the American arrived that night and would have slept on the floor but there was a spare bed.

They said that they get at least 10 couch surfing requests a day!

Loads of them couldn't work out if I was the German one or if Tanbay was.. they said he didn't sound German at all...

Stef is a really incredible person who can speak five languages, she recommended that we go to Cape Tribulation. She also told us this crazy story:  she and her friends were fishing on an island, and to get over there they waded across a tiny bit of waist height water. Later on they saw a crocodile in that water, which by this point was up to their necks and really murky. So they had to choose between dangerously wading back across it or walking across the island for two hours to cross the bridge! So they waded across and were very lucky to be alive! 

Ricardo showed us some juggling, he's learnt it all from YouTube and he is amazing at it! 

We managed to learn a word in French: Baver. It means dribble.


Monday 2nd December 2013

We had a chilled out morning while we waited for the sun to go down a bit, this is where we'd been sleeping the last two nights:



We got in the hammocks!!






Great stuff. 

We said goodbye to Stef and her boyf and went off on the next leg of our journey. It was really great staying there and we're so pleased that this was our first couch sit.