Today we said goodbye to Christian as he was off to Sweden for the net part of his journey. We were up early, feeling good and excited about getting into Italy and away from the French Riviera and their pricey ways! Sarsha was a little tentative after not being started for 10 days, but as always she was fine after 10 mins of warming up. We stopped at the top of Monaco for fuel and admired the view, then it was time to cross the border into Italy. Jake really did not enjoy the Italian roads, their idea of a freeway was to blow a hole in the mountain 150 metres from the ground, build a tunnel and then a high narrow bridge to connect it to the next hole in the mountain. His fear of heights made it an interesting drive with him behind the wheel....slowly creeping away from the steep drop off and closer to the centre of the road.
We stopped again for petrol now in Italy and swapped driver. We aren’t sure whether it was the mixing of fuel between France and Italy but all of a sudden Sarsha was running quite rough and back firing a bit. The plan was to get to Pisa by lunch time and then Florence by the evening. We had just passed the town of Genova and travelling through on of the many tunnels towards Pisa, all of a sudden it sounded like a train was driving next to us, we then all realised that we had had a blow out on the rear driver’s side tyre. We had atleast 1km to drive before there was somewhere to stop....We made it just but the tyre was destroyed. We got the spare tyre out, jacked up the van only to find out the there was not shifter for the wheel nuts....an emergency call was made to the Italian highway patrol and they turned up within about 15 mins.....but did not have any tools in their van. After Jake trying to work out what was going on we realised the Sarsha was going to get towed whether we liked it or not. The first tow truck arrived and then left as Sarsha was far to big to fit on his tray. About 15 mins later a bigger truck arrived and before we knew Sarsha was all hooked up and being dragged onto the back of the tray. The driver told us all to pile into Sarsha (we are sure that this is illegal in Australia but not sure of the law in Italy....). After a short 30 minute drive, precariously balanced on the back of the tray and everyone holding their breathes as we turned each corner we arrived at depot.
The mechanics left us standing around for a bit, then changed the tyre in about 2 minutes, we stood around a bit more then out comes the bill....€220 to be towed and tyre changed all because we didn’t have a €10 shifter!!! They then tried to tell us that it would another €250 for a replacement tyre....we left there quick smart.
We managed to find a campsite close by so we headed straight there to access the situation....this particular campsite had no internet so that didn’t help but luckily the people that worked there were able to point us in the direction of a tyre store for the next morning.
The only left to do was find somewhere to get some food and have few drinks to calm the nerves. We found a really cheap chinese restaurant, filled up on MSG and beer, then it was off to bed to dream about what our next move would be and how much it was going to cost.
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