Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and a few other stories

This country is fairly notorious for bad rental cars, and the one we've hired is no exception. From the start the car has had several issues such as a bad wheel alignment (steering wheel was turned 85 degrees from where it should be), power steering that doesn't work (I'm guessing there is no power steering fluid), unevenly worn brakes, etc.

All this we've managed to get by with fairly safely and still do what we wanted to do. This all went awry on Saturday.

Our day started off well. We went into Rabbat and did some shopping, then went back to the Citadel to visit the gun battery and silos which had been closed on our previous visit. This was actually quite interesting as we were taken through some tunnels into the Silos and told about their history. The people that do these tours are a volunteer group called Wirt Ghawdex. They are in charge of running the tours on behalf of the Ministry of Gozo but rely soley on donations to do any work to the place or staff it.

After that we had some lunch and went home for a rest. Later in the afternoon we decided to retry finding the Ta Cenc cliffs (our last visit had been unsuccessful and we ended up in Mgarr Ix-Xeni instead after taking a wrong turn). So we get most of the way there when I notice that braking is not as effective as it had been previously. At first I thought I was imagining it, but the further we got, the harder it was to brake. Not wanting to drive off the cliff, Andrew and I decided to abandon our attempt, head home and contact the hire company. Barely a couple of kilometers down the road the brakes gave up completely and we managed to pull over with the aid of the hand brake. Thankfully I was taking it very slowly!

I then chased down some locals to work out where exactly we were and called the hire company. Leli, the owner of the company, arrived after about 15mins to investigate the problem. His solution, let's all hop in the car and head back to the depot at full speed. Needless to say Andrew and I were holding on for dear life, expecting the brakes to fail at any moment. Naturally they didn't (GRRR), but he still kept the car and gave us the one he'd set aside for my brother's arrival.

WHAT A DIFFERENCE! The car he'd kept for my brother actually worked properly (mostly). The only issue it seems to have is that it's a little rough in the idling. So why couldn't we get a car like that? We've had the car for the rest of the weekend but have to swap back to the crap one today as my brother is arriving and my parents are returning from the cruise.

Yesterday was clean up day. We caught up on some washing and tidied the house a little. The in the afternoon we caught up with some of my cousins who we hadn't seen yet. We drove to my cousin Sammy's place (a very nice apartment in Rabbat) and met his wife and their little baby Glen. What a little cutie!

Then my cousin Phillip (Sammy's brother), his wife and their two kids arrived and we spent a few hours chatting, nibbling on the delicious spread of fingerfood and catching up. We then topped off the evening by having dinner with my Australian cousins and watching the World Cup final. (on that, what a crap game!)