Highway to Hell

After spending a quiet day in Sydney (Monday) doing nothing much else but checking internet, Skyping with our boyfriends, making meals and reading, we booked an early bus ride for Tuesday that would take us to Melbourne.

The budget company we booked with was called Firefly after hearing nothing but good reviews for. But, after waiting more than half an hour for the bus to arrive Tuesday morning and noticing that they had borrowed a Greyhound bus, we became a little skeptical of how smooth our journey would actually go.

The ride we were promised would take us 13 hours to complete with 2 meal breaks and another one to fill up with gas. But, just two hours into it an engine alarm went off (shutting it down) and so we pulled over to allow it to cool, taking at least 15 minutes. This continued to happen every now and again, putting us through the same routine of pulling over and letting the bus boil in the sizzling summer heat while trying to let it cool. Apparently the temperature outside was 43 degrees C for most of the trip (where 38C = 100F), and it was even hotter on the bus. All the while, the air conditioning was turned off for whatever mechanical reasons during our trip so the only air passing through the bus came from a tiny vent up top. It was a sauna, to say the least.

Passengers, although sweaty and miserable, started to join together in conversation (to pass time, I suppose) and so we were able to hear people’s travelling/life stories from all around the world, including Australia for most of the ride. The Swedish couple behind us were especially fun to talk to and so was the Australian woman who wished she wasn’t so scared to fly that forced her to take a bus instead.

In one of our stops, due to an overheated engine, the driver took us to a gas station for us to sit in its “air conditioned” room inside (although, we couldn’t feel the difference in temperature, inside or out). But, just after a few minutes without warning the bus driver came inside and told one person sitting down in quiet that they should get on the bus because we’re ready to go. After they got up and went out the door most people followed, but because there was no grand announcement made to everyone, once we boarded there were some empty seats and the driver had no idea. Outside the window some passengers could be seen running after and fortunately they were able to catch up. Once they were onboard, an old lady was remembered being missing and thank goodness someone ran in to find her. She had fallen asleep (probably due to minor heat exhaustion) and slowly made it back on the bus as well.

In any case though, despite it being a “highway to hell” we managed to look on the bright side of it all. We met interesting people along the way and saved a few bucks by booking with “Firefly.” We’ll just have to keep those memories close when considering the next option of booking cheap. Or we’ll look into the other option- flying.