So we were just getting in to the Peruvian desert on the road from Piura to Chiclayo when we realised we only had about a quarter of a tank of fuel - not enough for the full 206km journey. But Paul was confident there'd be a petrol station along the way.....of course we should've remembered from the outward journey that there wasn't, and it soon became clear we were going to run out of fuel.
In the meantime, a knocking sound had developed whenever the van was at low speeds, which was quite often because there were lots of detours around roadworks. So while I was worrying about what we were going to do when we ran out of fuel, Paul was worried about the prospect of a mechanical fault.
Just as we were working out a plan of action for when we ran out fuel, we came across a building with a 'We sell fuel' sign outside. Inside there was an old man with vats of fuel in his front room, waiting for idiots like us to turn up. There was a bit of confusion over exactly what fuel we wanted because, unnervingly, they call diesel petroleo here. After confirming that this was diesel ("the fuel lorries use") we got 18l for 70 soles or about £15 (still cheaper than at home!) Who knows what it was diluted with, but dirty diesel was better than no diesel.
So with enough fuel to get us to the nearest petrol station, we set off. As expected, the knocking sound was there again as we pulled away, only this time it was followed by a clunk and the battery light coming on on the dashboard... We pulled over straight away and found that the fan belt had snapped!!!! It had been squealing for a while, I suppose we pushed our luck with how long we had to replace it.
Anyway, we were now stuck in the desert unable to drive anywhere and with no RAC to call. There were vehicles going past, it wasn't like we were completely stranded, but even if we flagged someone down, what would we do? Buy a fan belt and find a mechanic who could come all the way out to the van and fit it? There seemed to be no easy way out of it. So, Paul's plan of action was to fashion a replacement fan belt out of the hem of a t-shirt.
Sadly, this did not work. We drove for about 20 seconds until it was clear the engine was going to overheat. The replacement fan belt had flown off straight away, so Paul fashioned a second one. This didn't survive revving the engine while the van was static - the knot failed. Then just as Paul was considering alternative knots, a truck driver pulled over of his own accord and reversed back towards us. Cue me thinking: "Maybe he has a spare fan belt of exactly the size we need and he knows how to fit it!" No. But when Paul showed him our problem, the truck driver said straight away that he was going to tow us because it was dangerous where we were! Being towed hadn't even crossed our minds as an option!! (At this point, despite the relief at being rescued, Paul says he was slightly disappointed not to get to see if he could fashion a successful replacement fan belt!)
So we got towed the final 60km to Chiclayo (we needn't have bothered with the emergency fuel!) The truck driver brought us all the way to a petrol station where we could stay the night and which had a mechanic right next door. I can't believe how nice he was; he didn't want any money and dashed off as soon as we were untethered.
The next day, the mechanic next door turned out to be just as amazingly helpful. We had to go in to town to buy a new fan belt, so he negotiated with a taxi driver to take us there, wait for us to do our shopping and then take us back. The first fan belt we got was too short though, so he had to do that all again! While we were hailing the second cab, the truck driver who towed us drove past in the opposite direction and recognised us. He slowed right down and was honking at us and waving and shouting!! Can't believe he spotted us and recognised us!
When we eventually got the right size fan belt and had it fitted, the mechanic only charged us 30 soles (£6.70). I almost felt bad paying so little as he'd spent quite a lot of time working on our van, including replacing a bolt that was missing from the alternator assembly.
The early morning productivity got us in the mood for sorting out the van, so next stop was a car wash where cleaners spent more than 2 hours washing off iguana poo we'd accumulated while parked under a tree in Canoa, plus loads of mud from driving in the rain in southern Ecuador. They also vacuumed up all the sand we'd collected from the various beaches we've been to.
Before, during and after:
Then it was to the tyre shop to replace our worn down tyres....
And then we popped in to a car spares market down the road. We needed to replace the glass in one of our wing mirrors, which had shattered when we hit an invisible post which turned up in the middle of a road in Ecuador. Plus our rear view mirror needed repairing. We ended up finding a glass cutter (or rather, he found us wandering around with broken mirrors) who fixed and fitted both for £30 - bit expensive, but he did a good job and his colleague spent ages drilling out and replacing a threaded screw in the rear view mirror.
So all in all, a productive van reparation day. Now all we need is a new windscreen....
