The next morning the sun was out, the temperature soon rose and the place looked much different. No rain. No screaming. No cold. We canvassed and found a nice spot to park the bus, not too far and close to the river. After several attempts I got the bus perfect only to realize that the side door opened straight into a tree. I had parked the bus facing the wrong way. With Marjo’s help we tried a second attempt and got a perfect setting.
The sun made it really nice and we went out to look at digging our retirement fortune of gold. I guess naivity can be a blessing. When we arrived at the sand riverbank we were greeted by a 1:100 ratio of gold to sand grains. The sand was literally glittering with gold. Unfortunately the gold was so small and flaky that trying to collect it only meant that the flinter thin gold ended up smearing over your hand. A gold speckled hand is nice but not useful other than that we now understand the meaning of a golden handshake.
We managed to find some of the thicker pieces of gold but still only about half a millimeter thick and 2×3 millimeter in size. You would need thousands of those to make any noticeable weight, let alone making a fortune. I guess at some areas there could be larger nuggets but we lost interest.
The area is stunning though, large boulders everywhere and the water cold and in places streaming fast. The temperature of the water I experienced up close. Marjo ventured further with Nossi and returned after half an hour, I meanwhile tried ways to collect the gold slivers quicker and was professionally washing sand, sitting on my hunches, failing miserably. When Marjo returned I got up and apparently my veins decided to supply my legs with fresh blood after having been constricted for some time. With insufficient oversupply of blood my brain cells got starved even more than what is normally the case and I blacked out for a few seconds. I mumbled something and Marjo thought nothing special of that. The hill of sand on which I stood guided me back so that in two stumbling steps I fell backwards in the freezing water and got saturated. If something wakes you up better than freezing water then I don’t want to know about it. I was up in no time and got back to the bus, realizing that I had no keys. Luckily I only found the waterproof camera in my pockets. Marjo followed soon with keys and I changed clothes, hanging the soaked ones to dry in the sun.
After this adventure we lit a fire, found more wood and made a nice big fire to warm me and dry the clothes. Both worked so so, I stayed cold all night, also because with a clear night the temperature dropped to 2 Celcius and also the clothes smelled nice of smoke and were still quite wet on the clothes line.
NOW Axel..I honestly thought you were joking, when you mumbled something and started stumbling toward the waters edge! Sorry!
And yes the river area is stunning,I love the boulders in the water, creating little waterfalls.
On my walk with Nossi, he did a perfect impression of a kangaroo while spotting one across the water.
And a bit later he spotted an echidna,which in turn tried to hide under a rock.
Lucky only it’s bum stuck out,(Nossi was sniffing it) and not it’s face, I think Nossi would have gotten acupuncture otherwise.
Axel also collected firewood to put in the trailer for future campfires. At the last camping a guy commented you should jump on fire wood if you see any!
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