More Than We Bargained For

Today we spent our last day of vacation in the Margaret River Valley of Western Australia (and yes, we were able to find last minute accommodation last night so we didn't have to sleep in the car!) Our day started with a beautiful drive through the Karri Forests, followed by a fantastic lighthouse tour at the southeastern most point of Australia (the tallest mainland lighthouse in Australia, the third tallest lighthouse overall). Then the rain started. We found soup for lunch at a local tavern and headed out for our drive back to Perth. We had planned in 2-3 hours for driving back to the airport, more than what should have been needed on a good day. Well, today was not a good day. There were massive rains that slowed traffic through our whole journey. As we neared the city we began to realize that making our flight was going to be near impossible. We were trying to stay calm and assess our options, and then traffic started stopping - brake lights everywhere - the car in front of us started skidding - and there we went - crashed right into a bright orange ute. And there were many more fender benders in front of us. Fortunately, there were no injuries and minor damage to the other car. Our rental had a ding in the bumper (which we've learned will probably cost us roughly 500 Euros!), but the time it took to exchange details and sit through the post wreck traffic sealed the deal for us missing the plane (mind you, we were running trying to get at least one of us onto the plane at the last minute, but it just wasn't happening). Luckily someone was watching over us today and, after all of the drama of the afternoon, an angel in the form of a Qantas ticketing agent helped us get things straightened away with our tickets so we can get home tonight with slightly less impact to the pocketbook than may have been required.

So now we have a 5 hour wait in the airport until our flight (yay for the Internet), and we will be getting into Melbourne in the early morning hours to face a quick turnaround and head to work - but at least we will make it home! We've done a lot of traveling in the past year and we have to feel lucky that we've managed to have all good experiences as long as we have - hopefully getting through this not so good one will set us on the right track for our many coming travels!