Cars, Beach, Sun...Oh My!

Yesterday (Saturday for us, Friday for Canadians) we spent a little bit of time car shopping.  When I say "a little bit" I mean a little bit.  The dealerships are only open from 8am-1pm on Saturdays and closed on Sundays.  They are open 8am-6pm every weekday and 8am-9pm on Wednesdays.  Don't ask me why, I don't know.  But I'm guessing it's the same reason every town name here ends in "agong" (as in "Booragong") or "loo" (as in "Jindaloo").  I've been considering have a weird name-off between Australia and Saskatchewan ("Plato", "Climax", etc.) but that would require research and I didn't move to Australia to work hard.

Anyhoo...we want a 7 seater but it can't be a mini-van (been there, done that) nor a full sized SUV like a Chevy Suburban, Ford Expedition or the Cadillac OpenPitMiner.  Besides the carbon footprint, which is more like a Bigfoot print, it's also a lot of vehicle and more than we need or feel we can handle.  So, we've settled on the smaller 7 seater SUV's which include the Toyota Kluger, Mazda CX-9, Volvo SomethingOrOther and a bunch of others that are all over $40,000 (for a used vehicle).  So, we've decided that we'll get a cheaper one for now and see how things go.  The list includes:

Holden Captiva

 The Holden is actually GM here but the major difference being that they are design in Korea and built in Australia so the quality is a bit better than what I've come to expect from GM.

Hyundai Santa Fe:

Kia Sorrento (same as the Hyundai but with a different skin):

Right now in Australia the selection of used cars is slim.  This is primarily because many of the cars sold here come from Japan and Korea.  The SE Asian car market was decimated during the Japanese tsunami and most of the cars are being sent to Asian countries where they make up a much larger percentage of the overall sales.  Australia accounts for only 2% of Japanese auto sales.  As a result, people are keeping their cars longer here and when a good used car does come on the market it's snapped up pretty quickly.  Obviously, the short supply is also driving up the price.  Lucky us.  Fortunately, both Holden (GM) and Ford (Ford) are made in Australia so there are plenty of them around.  Unfortunately, the Ford Territory is not very good when it comes to the third row seats.  It's quite cramped in the back row so we've ruled it out.

After we went car shopping we decided to go to the beach.  It was about 25C yesterday but it was quite chilly at the beach.  The reason is because of the Easterly wind from the Indian Ocean they call the "Fremantle Doctor".  They refer to it as the doctor because it really cools things down in summer.  It comes in every afternoon, so as a result the hottest time of the day is usually late morning.

Here is Nadia bundled up at the beach on Saturday afternoon:

Here is Nadia at the same beach on Sunday morning:

In the morning both the wind and water is calm and lovely.  It was 28C today and a perfect day at the beach.  Today was good.

Tomorrow, we are looking at our final school option.  We've narrowed the search down to two schools and after tomorrow we will decide on the school and therefore the catchment area that we will live in.  So, by next weekend we hope to have a car, a phone, a school and a neighbourhood.  The end of the hard decisions is near!  (for now)