Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave20046
How'd you end up there? And more to the point, why did you come back? I'm not sure I could ever get sick of a hot climate...but guess I've never lived in one!
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We lived in South Africa ( 5 years ) and Australia ( 9 years ) and trust me you do get fed up of hot weather and long for some cool weather and rain ( after literally years with non ), you also get fed up of bush fires, ticks ( tick bite fever ), spiders that can kill you, snakes, cockroaches, mosquitos ( denge fever and Ross river fever and maybe malaria) that bite you through clothing and not being able to sleep at nights, Oh and also it being too hot do do things in the daytime as well. many people don't believe it but we are blessed in UK with our weather - it really is Goldilocks weather. Oh and you miss the green colour of the countryside and plants, the plants that live in hotter climates are normally silvery ( or probably brown from lack of water ). The green in UK really does hurt your eyes when you come back for visits. Did I mention flooding and duststorms - and the flies that go in your ears and up your nose and under you sunglasses, and skin cancer in people as young as 20.....
The sun in places like Australia is about 10x as damaging as UK sun, so if you are wise you end up covering up with long sleeves, proper trousers and a large hat, and you do not see many soft-top cars in Aussie as you would be like a lobster after 20 minutes, Soft tops are the preserve of temperate countries / area like UK.
Once you got out of cities many roads except for national trunk roads were dirt roads that used to acquire a real washboard surface, in a car you would do 60 down the straights to only hit the tops of the bumps and keep thicng smooth, but if you didn't slow down for the corners you vibrated off the road ( and many vehicles belonging to tourists did ) - flying stones as dust a real hazard and forget it in wet weather, the roads were horrible, a clue is that tarmac or concrete roads were called 'all weather roads'. The vast distances don't help either, you need a bike with a big fuel tank because the last thing you want to do is run out of fuel on a lonely desert road, where you could tick the passing vehicles off on a calendar.