Wednesday July 2nd - Picking Up The Caravan Attempt #2

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We showed up right at opening after dealing with the security deposits late last night. We got the campervan without a hitch this time. We took it first down the road to the city mall to pick up a FM transmitter for our iPods. I was the most confident manual driver it seemed so I drove first. We went into the underground parking hitting the height warning.
It didn’t bring up any alarms within us. We got into the actual structure fine. I turned into one of the lanes and all of a sudden there was a loud noise. The plastic top of the campervan was wedged beneath an aluminum plumbing pipe. The roof was pushed inwards. I instantly had extremely high anxiety and could not think logically. I got out of the car and told Mike that he had to get us out. He backed it out of the lane and we hit the top a few more times as it was a one way street. We returned it back to the place telling them we had had enough of manual driving and that we wanted to see our options. They told us that we could get a station wagon which was the only thing they had which was automatic. We agreed but before we could take the station wagon the van had to be repaired. They told us first off that the only damage was to two ventilation caps on the top of the roof. Upon further inspection the plastic had been damaged. We drove the van to the panel beaters where we arranged a “cash in hand” deal. It ended up only costing us 300 dollars in total. It took the rest of the day to get the van fixed and the okay to take the station wagon. We received a 1991 white Ford Falcon Forte station wagon. We got our luggage from the hostel, picked up Katja from her hostel and got groceries before beginning our journey North towards Cape Tribulation.

We went North on the Captain Cook Highway which winded along the coast up to Mossman, about 90 kilometres North of Cairns. We stopped at a caravan park for the night and set up the large 8 person tent we had purchased off Katjas friend.

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